SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #822 (87), Friday, November 22, 2002
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TITLE: Small Program Doing Its Best for Street Kids
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Both Svetlana Oskina and her Swedish foster father, Kjell Gerdin, are happy people - their dreams are at last coming true.
 
By the time she was 12 years old, after six years of begging on the street, sniffing glue and living in a manhole, Oskina, who is now 19, had two dreams - to have a father, who would protect her from the hardships of her street life, and to study.
 For his part, Gerdin dreamt of being able to help Russian street children.
 Six years after she showed up at a shelter for homeless children run by Gerdin, Oskina goes to prep courses at Herzen Pedagogical University three times a week. She says that she wants to become a psychologist, complete at least two degrees, learn a number of foreign languages, and build a successful career.
 "Romance is of less importance," she says.
 "Today's Svetlana and that girl who first came to our shelter in 1996 are like day and night," says Gerdin, the founder and head of the St. Petersburg Child Protection Society.
 "My goal is to prove to myself and to other street children that there is a better life," says Oskina. "And to prove that everything depends on the person!"
 Looking at the ambition flickering in Oskina's eyes as she discusses her plans, it is clear that her strong character and intelligence helped her to escape the temptations of the street - to quit smoking and sniffing glue - and to complete a program of four elementary-school grades in just one month.
 But, she says, her ambition was not the main reason she finally gave the life up.
 "It was constant humiliation that made me leave the streets," Oskina says.
 According to Gerdin, St. Petersburg has around 130,000 street children - including children who spend a lot of time in the street working as menial laborers, collecting bottles or begging, even if they still live at home. About 1,500 of them are street children in the purest and harshest sense - they live on the streets full time - he says.
 In 1995, Gerdin, a former Lutheran pastor and a psychologist, shocked by the growing street-kids problem in Russia, organized a society to protect the children.
 He says the move came from his belief that "the proper human and financial resources invested into the problem" could return the children to living normal lives.
 Gerdin's society runs two shelters - the "Nadezhda" ("Hope") center for boys and the "Masha" center for girls - that have spaces for 25 children. He also provides aid to street children and poor mothers.
 "Many people ask me why I bother doing this," Gerdin said. "Of course, I could have been making much more money if I was working in Sweden. However, at some point of your life, you realize that you can't buy happiness. You can only get it by giving."
 Oskina has became one of many proofs of his philosophy.
 She left home at the age of seven, together with her three-year-old brother, when her mother simply stopped coming home regularly, and she and her six siblings rarely had anything to eat.
 Theirs was a hard life. They often received burns from heating pipes they huddled near at night to keep warm, were abused by teenage street kids, and had policemen put glue bags on their heads to make their hair stick together.
 Some girls were raped by strangers, while others resorted to prostitution.
 "It was always a necessity to be able to take care of yourself, without anyone to protect you," Oksina says. "I just wanted to study so badly!"
 Oskina says that she and her best friend, Alyona, used to watch children going to school in the morning, and even hung around schools sometimes just to feel as if they were part of the atmosphere.
 But Oksina says that, despite her desire to become part of something more concrete or stable, the way of life on the street had its own attraction, a feeling of freedom.
 "It's the feeling you have when you can have money and spend it any way you want. It's when you don't have to wake up at certain time and don't have to follow any schedule. You can just do what you want," she said.
 Gerdin and his Russian colleagues at "Masha" managed to help Oskina finally move in a different direction, as they have with many others.
 Vanya Kudinov, now 18, is another of the society's success stories. Kudinov, along with his two brothers, began his life on the street at the age of 9, after their mother left them alone in a communal apartment.
 He also found it hard at first to make the switch away from the street.
 "It was very embarrassing when I went to school, in the first grade, at the age of 12, when all my classmates were seven years old," Kudinov says. "But I made myself go on studying."
 Now he is studying shipbuilding metalwork at a technical college and is doing his apprenticeship at Admiralty Verfi.
 But, for all the success stories, there are also failures, and the attachment to the sense of freedom among many street kids is one of the major obstacles the organization faces.
 According to social workers, although street life is uncomfortable, cold and dangerous, it is still extremely difficult to convince street children to give it up.
 "You can't pull a child away from the street without treating the child as a friend," says Olga Zemlyakova, a social worker with the society. "Words alone won't work with these children. You have to make a child really like and trust you." 
 The process of befriending street children usually takes a long time. It starts when the society's red minibus goes on what the society calls &quot;night patrols&quot; to metro stations where the majority of the city's street children hang out. The social workers bring tea and <i>pirozhki, </i>or pies, to feed the children, but feeding them is not the point of the practice.
 The social workers' aim is to establish contact with children, find out who they are, what their family and general life situation is, and gradually start trying to get them to decide to give up life on the street in favor of life in a shelter.
 One such night patrol took place Wednesday night. The society's red bus came to its last stop of the night, at Ulitsa Dybenko metro station, and a group of street children surrounded the vehicle that is well known to them, waiting for food.
 Most of the children were dirty, some had lice, while others clearly smelled of some of the industrial liquids that many of them sniff.
 One boy, Pasha, 12, was given the last of the pirozhki, six or seven of them, in a plastic bag.
 He said that he would take the bag home but, before he could make his escape, a bigger boy, Sergei, tried to wrestle the bag away from him. Only intervention by volunteers and the proposal of giving two of the pies to Sergei allowed Pasha to make his escape successfully.
 Zemlaykova says that, in the group of about 10 children who met them at the metro station, only one, named Kristina, is psychologically more or less ready to move into a shelter, but still hasn't decided to do so.
 While the society is doing what it can with limited resources, Gerdin says that the situation continues to deteriorate with each passing year, as the number of street children increases, and the situation in which they live becomes more complicated.
 &quot;A large part of the new generation of street kids comes not from the city, but from the Leningrad Oblast, and there are more and more substance abusers among them,&quot; he said.
 Gerdin said that, given the situation, what makes him particularly sad is that, more than a decade after this problem really began to hit Russia, little help comes from the Russian people themselves, particularly from Russian businesspeople.
 Funding for the society comes in the form of allocations from various foreign charities, located in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Norway and Australia. Gerdin says that it costs as much as $100,000 per year to operate the society, with the maintenance of each shelter running from $3,500 to $4,500 a month. Running a night patrol costs $50.
 Leonid Osipov, the general director of the society, said that the group's finances sometimes get tight and it appeals for help to different Russian companies, but rarely receives response.
 He said the society was really moved when Russky Khlebnyi Dom, a bakery, agreed to donate bread and <i>pryaniki, </i>a sort of gingerbread cookie, and when a collective farm just outside of Pushkin gave them two tons of potatoes and 1 1/2 tons of cabbage for the winter.
 &quot;Now we are looking for money to equip a small fitness center for the shelter's children and to hire more social workers,&quot; Osipov said.
 For Svetlana Oksina, who wanted so badly to have a father, the fact that Gerdin and his wife Liisa decided to become her foster parents was a dream come true.
 &quot;Papa always protects me, and I feel so happy,&quot; she said.
 Gerdin says that they have developed into a family. And he has even found a bit of humor in acting as her guardian.
 &quot;You know, now she is at the age where she has started going out on dates. So, once, when she came back home in a car with her boyfriend, I couldn't resist asking the young man for his passport,&quot; Gerdin laughs. &quot;I said 'You have my daughter in your car, so please let me see your documents!'&quot;
 And Oskina says that she still has one more dream to come true.
 &quot;I want to create a good and secure life for my future children, who should definitely have a good father,&quot; she says.
 
 <i>
The St. Petersburg Child Protection Society can be reached at 252-3179 or 252-2124. </i>

TITLE: Russia Takes Expansion of NATO in Stride
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian officials reacted calmly to NATO's decision Thursday to embrace seven new members, including three former Soviet republics, but said that the expansion was unnecessary and causes some security concerns despite Russia's new, warmer ties with the alliance.
 
&quot;Russia doesn't overdramatize the situation concerning NATO's expansion,&quot; Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Yakovenko wrote in an article published Thursday in the government's official daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
 Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov said Thursday that Russia doesn't see NATO as a threat and has &quot;normal&quot; bilateral ties with all new alliance members.
 Under former President Boris Yeltsin, Russia protested loudly against the first wave of NATO expansion in 1999, when the alliance incorporated the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland - the former Soviet bloc countries which were part of the Warsaw Pact - a military counterbalance to NATO during the decades of the Cold War.
 President Vladimir Putin has tempered the anti-NATO rhetoric and has forged a closer relationship with the alliance following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. In May, NATO signed an agreement with Russia making it a limited partner and setting up a joint council for making decisions on counterterrorism, nonproliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, missile defense, peacekeeping, search-and-rescue at sea and other issues.
 Russian Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov assailed the government for its calm reaction to NATO's eastward move in an open letter to Putin released Thursday.
 &quot;NATO's expansion will pose the most serious military threat to Russia since the Nazi invasion,&quot; Zyuganov said.
 While hailing the &quot;big potential&quot; of Russia's new ties with the alliance, Yakovenko said that Moscow still believes that there was no &quot;objective need&quot; for NATO's expansion, which has been &quot;driven largely by inertia.&quot; During its summit in Prague, NATO on Thursday invited the ex-Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, to join its ranks.
 &quot;We continue to believe that it doesn't add security to either NATO, candidate countries or Russia,&quot; Yakovenko said. &quot;In particular, the projection of NATO's military potential to the Russian borders and to a distance of just several dozen kilometers from St.Petersburg, can't leave us unperturbed.&quot;
 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that Russia views NATO's expansion &quot;calmly&quot; but expects the Baltic nations to quickly join the modified Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty that puts limits on weapons and troops presence in different regions of the continent.
 Yakovenko, meanwhile, pointed at the need to protect the rights of ethnic Russians in the Baltics, which Moscow said were often violated.
 &quot;By taking responsibility for the expansion move, NATO also takes part of the responsibility for settling these problems,&quot; he said.
 The reaction in the Baltic States to the announcement was celebratory, with champagne corks popping and legislators cheering and one leader even shaving his beard.
 Latvian Prime Minister Einars Repse called Thursday the most important day in his country's history since the Baltics regained independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 &quot;This means our independence and the ideals of freedom and democracy that we fought for will be protected forever,&quot; he said, speaking to a crowd in driving snow by the Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia's capital.
 Estonian legislator Mart Laar kept the vow he made as prime minister last year that he would shave his trademark blond beard if NATO invited the Baltics, a top foreign policy priority a decade ago.
 Baltic media broadcast the event live, and politicians watched TVs, shouting approval as the names of their countries were read.
 &quot;Considering where we were years ago, it's very gratifying,&quot; said Estonian parliamentarian Mari-Ann Kelam, sipping celebratory champagne.
 Politicians have avoided saying it, but most Balts are quick to point to Russia as reason No. 1 for wanting to snuggle under NATO's protective wing.
 &quot;You know other neighbors who might ever invade us?&quot; said Tonu Ekberg, 58, shopping at a market in Tallinn, Estonia's capital. &quot;Sweden? Finland? Come on!&quot;

TITLE: Petersburg Remembers Murdered Deputy
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Wednesday marked the fourth anniversary of the assassination of State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, who was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg.
 
The day of mourning brought tributes from political luminaries and ordinary citizens alike. Relatives and friends of Starovoitova gathered at noon to attend a memorial service at the Alexander Nevsky monastery, where the murdered deputy is buried. 
 A number of political figures were present, including Irina Khakamada, the vice speaker of the State Duma and co-leader of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) party, and Yevgeny Makarov, who represented Northwest Region Presidential Representative Viktor Cherkesov. Sergei Mironov, the president of the Federation Council, chose not to attend the service, but came to Nikolskoye cemetery, which is located on the monastery grounds, before the service to lay flowers on Starovoitova's grave.
 City Hall did not send a representative to the ceremony.
 Many ordinary people were in attendance to remember a politician who was considered a dedicated advocate of democracy and human rights, attending the service or laying flowers or wreaths on her grave.
 In the evening, Armenian folk-music artist Karo Chalikyan gave a concert in her memory at the Hermitage Theater. Starovoitova was a strong supporter of the Armenian quest for independence and, in 1989, was elected to represent Armenia in the Soviet Parliament.
 Though then-President Boris Yeltsin promised that the case would be solved quickly and urged the head of the Interior Ministry and FSB at the time, Vladimir Putin, to oversee the investigation personally, the last four years have yielded little in the way of concrete results.
 The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast administration of the Federal Security Service (FSB), which is leading the investigation, said on Nov. 6 that it had arrested and charged six men involved in the murder, providing some hope that the case might be solved. Many politicians, however, received the news with a degree of skepticism, saying that suspects had been arrested in the past, but it led to nothing.
 Despite the recent arrests, investigators have refused to release any further information or to identify those who have been charged, saying that it would hinder their investigation.
 &quot;We are currently carrying out a series of investigations and operations that are aimed at documenting the criminal activities of those charged, as well as establishing the whereabouts of individuals still being sought by the government,&quot; a spokesperson from the press service of the FSB quoted FSB investigators as saying. &quot;We cannot release any more information for the sake of the investigation,&quot; the spokesperson added.
 Interfax reported on Wednesday that, in the past four years, about 3,000 people have been questioned and 350 witnesses had been asked to file statements in relation to the investigation.
 &quot;Her murder ranks among the most important political crimes in Russia in the past 12 years,&quot; Grigory Yavlinsky, the head of the Yabloko party, was reported by Interfax as saying on Tuesday. &quot;And, like all political crimes, it has yet to be solved. This is an extremely dangerous and telling tendency.&quot;

TITLE: Russia Accused of Censorship
AUTHOR: By Doug Mellgren
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OSLO, Norway - A Norwegian television reporter accused Russian security officials of censorship Thursday, claiming they had seized and erased tapes he made for a report on Chechen refugees.
 
Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld, Moscow correspondent for the Norwegian state broadcast network NRK, said he and his Russian camera operator were stopped by security police at an airport in Ingushetia on Wednesday.
 Steinfeld said the officers seized four tapes. The tapes were returned but the reporter discovered later that an hour of footage had been erased on two of them.
 &quot;I have never before experienced Russian security police destroying film material,&quot; said Steinfeld, who has covered Russia for much of the past two decades. In Moscow, the press office of the FSB security police said they had no information about Steinfeld's claim. Other foreign news organizations, including Germany's ARD TV, have also previously complained of official Russian pressure over their coverage of Chechnya.
 The Norwegian Foreign Ministry summoned a senior Russian Embassy official, Mikhail Kokeyev, to demand an explanation and was awaiting Mos cow's response.
 &quot;We said this is something we take seriously, and if this was done intentionally, it is a violation of [free speech],&quot; Foreign Ministry spokesperson Kaare Eltervaag said after the meeting.
 Steinfeld had been in Ingushetia reporting on tens of thousands of refugees who fled over the border from the conflict in Chechnya.
 He said he discovered upon returning to Moscow that segments from the Bart refugee camp and an interview with a top republic official were missing, possibly to get rid of specific material.
 &quot;We had stumbled over some news, namely that there are falsifications going on by the authorities about the number of Chechen refugees in Ingushetia,&quot; he said.
 Steinfeld acknowledged that he had not seen the footage before the tapes were seized but said the camera was in perfect condition and that they were able to determine that the electronic tapes were erased, probably by a strong magnet.

TITLE: Where Are All the Tourists Going To Stay?
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While the easing of a request from the government has brought some sighs of relief, the shortage of hotel rooms that St. Petersburg experiences every year during the peak of the tourism season will be exacerbated by the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations in May and June.
 
To ensure that the 15,000 official guests set to visit the city for the celebrations get the best rooms, the Presidential Property Department and the Tourism Department of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry sent a letter in July to 24 hotels in St. Petersburg, asking them to reserve all of their rooms for official guests between May 15 and June 5. While the news initially created concern within the local tourism industry, the government later reduced the official period to a few days, which was greeted positively by the city's major hoteliers.
 &quot;The fact that the government has asked us to block these dates for official guests doesn't disturb me, as they are going to fill all 232 of our rooms between May 27 and June 1,&quot; said the Astoria Hotel's international sales manager, Maurice Fleskens. &quot;We are happy, however, that the initial period, which was really too long, has been shortened to a few days.&quot;
 While the Presidential Property Office will not release the names of the 24 hotels contacted with the request, they include the city's four four-star hotels - the Astoria Hotel, the Grand Hotel Europe, the Corinthia Nevskij Palace and the Radisson SAS. While most of the high-level foreign guests will be guests of President Vladimir Putin at the Konsantinovsky Palace, near the suburb of Peterhof, the rooms in the city will be required to house foreign officials' security and support staff, as well as other support staff accompanying federal officials coming for the celebration from Moscow.
 According to the city administration's Tourism Committee, St. Petersburg currently has enough rooms to accommodate about 32,000 tourists, a number that increases by 17,000 if the city's 72 health resorts are included. &quot;Cruise ships are also becoming increasingly popular in the city, and are expected to bring 3,000 tourists next summer,&quot; said Valentin Zakharov, the Tourism Committee's spokesperson. &quot;But there will definitely not be enough rooms for everyone this summer, this happens every year.&quot;
 In 2001 alone, almost 4 million tourists, from Russia and abroad, visited St. Petersburg, but the number of tourists wishing to visit the city in the spring and summer 2003 is likely to break all previous records.
 &quot;About 40 delegations are expected to visit St. Petersburg, including countries from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the European Union, the G8, as well as India and China,&quot; said Presidential Property Department spokesperson Viktor Khrekov. &quot;The funds to cover the hotel bill will be taken from the federal budget, but I don't know how much it will amount to.&quot;
 Although the government has been careful to block hotel reservations soon enough in order to avoid a situation where hotels would have to cancel tourist bookings, the process is going slowly and some managers are still in the dark as to what will happen in their hotel during the end of May and the beginning of June.
 Even though the dates in the new government guidelines are narrower, the Grand Hotel Europe has already blocked off its rooms for a longer period.
 &quot;For the moment, we are not taking tourist reservations for the period between May 25 and June 5,&quot; the hotel's general manager Elmar Greif, said. &quot;We are still waiting for the government to send us more detailed information.&quot;
 According to Khrekov, the hotels could have to wait another few months for the precise guidelines. &quot;The process is underway, but concrete information will be available only toward the beginning of next year, because the bureaucratic process is going slowly&quot; he said. 
 To help organize the accommodation of official guests in St. Petersburg during the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations, the Presidential Property Department has selected four tourism agencies.
 &quot;AkademService, Intourist, Neva and KMP are the four tourism agencies that have been selected by the Presidential Property Department. AkademService will provide technological support and organize the reservation of rooms and the signing of the contracts with hotels,&quot; said Irina Volkova, the marketing manager at Moscow-based Akademservice.
 According to Volkova, the agency, which has already started working with the Astoria, is booking official guests for the period between May 27 and June 3. &quot;These dates can still be modified, but they will revolve around this period,&quot; she said.
 Volkova added that, although the agency has a representative office in St. Petersburg, all the bookings are being made through Moscow.
 The city administration says that it is aware of the accommodation problems and that it is trying to ease the situation.
 &quot;The city administration is taking active measures to improve this situation and build new hotels by attracting investors, turning over sites for construction and following up with the construction process,&quot; said Zakharov.
 As result of these measures, a series of hotels are expected to open before the 2003 celebrations. At present, new hotels are under construction on Vladimirsky Prospect, Suvorovsky Prospect, and on the grounds of the Sestroretsk golf club, as well as four small luxury hotels on Kamenny Ostrov. &quot;By 2006, the city plans to increase the number of hotel beds by 2,500,&quot; said Zakharov. 
 St. Petersburg hotel managers, while waiting impatiently for the government to provide them with the names of their clients and payment guarantees for the anniversary-celebration period, say that the government's actions in the sector have had positive and negative effects.
 &quot;Russia is now a democratic country, and it should act accordingly. Private enterprises should be able to work without state restrictions,&quot; Greif says. &quot;On the one hand, we should be glad that Putin is helping St. Petersburg the way he does, and we should cooperate to promote this city. On the other hand, the government should be careful to take decisions that will not affect tourism.&quot;

TITLE: Five Convicted Over Skinhead Rampage
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After a four-month trial, the Moscow City Court on Wednesday convicted five young men of participating in a skinhead rampage in Moscow's Tsaritsyno Market last year that killed three people and injured more than 30.
 
Student Sergei Volkov, 20, was found guilty of organizing the Oct. 30, 2001, rampage and sentenced to nine years in prison. Three other defendants - Vladimir Trubin, 23, a manager; Sergei Polyakov, 18, a vocational student; and Valery Rusakov, an unemployed 18-year-old - were found guilty of participating in the riot and beating dark-skinned traders and passers-by. The court gave each of them three years in prison. The fifth defendant, 21-year-old Moscow student Sergei Klemanov, received a suspended sentence of four years. The court found him guilty of helping plot the riot but let him off with a lighter sentence because he cooperated with investigators, Judge Pyotr Shtunder said.
 According to the verdict, which took Shtunder two hours to read, Volkov bought 150 steel bars at the Kashirsky Dvor construction-materials market the day before the riot. Klemanov delivered them to Tsaritsyno Park and hid them. He did not take part in the rampage.
 Trubin, Polyakov and Rusakov arrived at Tsaritsyno in the evening on Oct. 30 and, together with a crowd of about 150 young men, destroyed stalls and beat traders and passers-by with non-Slavic appearances, Shtunder said. The rampage continued inside the metro and at the nearby Sevastopol Hotel, which is home to migrants from the Caucasus region and Central Asia. The attackers chanted slogans such as &quot;Moscow for Russians&quot; and &quot;Beat the 'darkies,'&quot; the judge said. An Azeri, a Tajik and an Indian died after being beaten.
 Polyakov was detained on the spot, while the other four were picked up several days later. Polyakov, a stocky and brooding young man, has the emblem of the SS, the elite Nazi troops, tattooed behind his left ear.
 Volkov and Rusakov maintained their innocence during the court proceedings, while the others partially admitted their guilt. None of the victims showed up for the sentencing.
 Four of the defendants waited for the verdict inside the defendants' cage, surrounded by police and court guards. Klemanov sat at a table outside the cage, beside his mother and five defense lawyers. The mothers of Polyakov, Rusakov and Volkov stood near the cage.
 The courtroom was packed with about three dozen relatives and friends of the defendants. Trubin's mother and father, both looking glum, stood among the spectators and scribbled notes on scraps of paper throughout the hearing. Trubin's teenage sister kept her face turned to the wall.
 The caged defendants smiled and signaled friends in the courtroom as the judge went through a mind-numbing list of injuries that had been inflicted on men, women and children during the skinhead rampage.
 He said Rusakov was an active member of a skinhead movement. Rusakov had pleaded not guilty, saying he was with his girlfriend the evening of the riot. However, an Azeri woman testified at the trial that Rusakov, wielding a steel bar, had pounced on her and her granddaughter.
 The court ordered the defendants to pay 15,000 rubles ($480) in compensation to the woman and 38,000 rubles ($1,200) in damages to a Georgian cafe and a small company whose premises were destroyed during the riot. The judge said other victims of the attack could file lawsuits seeking damages.
 Several girls began sobbing in the courtroom after the verdict was read. The parents of most defendants showed little emotion. Klemanov's mother was visibly pleased with the suspended sentence and said she would not appeal. The parents and defense lawyers of the other defendants said they would appeal.
 &quot;The charges against Volkov are based only on Klemanov's testimony. Even if Volkov bought the steel bars, there is no evidence that he distributed them and participated in the beatings,&quot; said Volkov's lawyer, Vladimir Vymenits. In his court testimony, Volkov only acknowledged being a witness to the riot.
 The defendants have 10 days to appeal.

TITLE: SPS Blames Officials for Hostage Deaths
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After conducting its own probe into the handling of last month's hostage crisis, the Union of Right Forces party (SPS) blamed the death of 128 siege victims on officials in charge of organizing the rescue effort, the party's leadership said at an extraordinary meeting Tuesday evening.
 
However, party leaders were careful not to point the finger at specific officials, and acknowledged that the investigation was unlikely to lead to any disciplinary measures. &quot;The main reason for the rise in casualties among the hostages ... was negligence on the part of officials responsible for organizing first aid for the victims and their transportation to inpatient care units, and for the general coordination of activities aimed at saving people after the raid,&quot; said a resolution passed Tuesday after the commission in charge of the probe presented its findings.
 The resolution identified a dozen fatal flaws in the operation, including an &quot;unacceptably&quot; long wait for medical care, secrecy about the type of gas used in the raid, and a lack of coordination between commandos and rescue workers, including the absence of a health-care professional to coordinate efforts on-site. The document also condemned rescuers' failure to sort victims properly and immediately assess their condition, inadequate preliminary treatment and overcrowding at hospitals. &quot;It was absolutely obvious that the goal of saving people was secondary; the primary goal was to eliminate the terrorists,&quot; commission chairperson Eduard Vorobyov quoted an expert involved as saying.
 The commission, made up of nine SPS members and 11 experts, met seven times to review audio and video recordings, as well as press publications. Commission members also interviewed people who participated in the rescue operation. Of the 11 experts, only four agreed to make their names public. SPS leader Boris Nemtsov said this was due to &quot;understandable&quot; concerns and that attempts to intimidate the experts had been &quot;even greater than expected.&quot; He did not elaborate.
 Nemtsov also said that he has given the investigation results to President Vladimir Putin, who said &quot;the information was very close to what he knew&quot; already. However, Nemtsov said he had not been left with the impression that Putin would take action. A source familiar with the meeting said the president's response had been: &quot;Why agitate the country?&quot;
 Last week, Putin promised to appoint an official to look into unanswered questions about the siege, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky told The Associated Press on Friday.
 Although Nemtsov said that the negligence unearthed by the probe included grave criminal offenses, SPS refused to try to identify the officials who were guilty, saying that such matters should be left law enforcement and the courts. &quot;We are not investigators of the Prosecutor General's Office,&quot; Nemtsov said.
 The party's leaders voted to make the commission's findings public, but chose not to submit them directly to the prosecutor's office.
 Another SPS leader, Irina Khakamada, said the roots of the hostage-taking - which required more than 40 armed rebels to stockpile arms and explosives in the heart of Moscow - were linked to problems in law enforcement and the military, including widespread corruption and a decrepit agent network. Khakamada added that there were powerful interests among both rebels and federal officials who had vested interests in seeing the war in Chechnya continue.

TITLE: Media Ask Putin For Help on Law
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - In an unusual display of solidarity, the country's media petitioned President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to veto restrictive amendments to the media law and promised to swiftly develop an effective code of behavior during emergencies.
 
Putin has until next Wednesday to sign or veto the bill, which parliament adopted shortly after last month's hostage crisis in Moscow. Journalists feared that, if applied broadly, the bill could ban any discussion of the Chechen war or other conflicts and prohibit media from analyzing government's actions in crises.
 &quot;We agree that some actions by journalists and the mass media during the latest terrorist act in Moscow were incorrect,&quot; said the appeal, which was carried by Interfax. &quot;But these were mistakes and not a conscious disregard for the dangers that these actions could pose. To be fair, the media's mistakes were in part caused by the flaws of the government bodies that carried out the anti-terrorist operation in their contacts with mass media.&quot;

TITLE: Government Approves Market Blueprint
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The cabinet on Thursday approved a near-term blueprint for boosting the stock market by increasing transparency, eliminating bureaucracy and heightening public awareness. 
 
Igor Kostikov, chairperson of the stock market's main regulator, the Federal Securities Commission, which drew up the plan, said that it is necessary that the stock market should support the country's development in the long run.
 &quot;The most important goal for the financial markets is to service Russian economic growth,&quot; Kostikov was quoted by news agencies as saying after the meeting.
 The government and FSC will also work more actively to increase public awareness about the existing instruments, including the Russian collective investment funds, or PIFs. Mass media should play a bigger role in this process, Kostikov said. 
 The capitalization of public companies has soared 2.5 times to $106 billion over the past two years. 
 The benchmark Russian Trading System index is up 31 percent since the beginning of 2002 and more than 100 percent since the beginning of 2001. 
 There are 11 stock exchanges in Russia, three of which - RTS, the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange, or MICEX, and the Moscow Stock Exchange - are located in Moscow. 
 Total trading volume at these stock exchanges in the first half of 2002 was in excess of around $24 billion, with MICEX, which is dominated by local investors, accounting for 83 percent of this volume.
 In total, local companies have attracted $4.2 billion in Russia and abroad through new stock and bond issues since the beginning of 2002. &quot;This is three times more than in 2000 and 2001 and 2.4 times more than in 1997,&quot; Kostikov said. 
 But the government says that this is not enough. 
 Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said that the government is actively looking at ways to reduce the cost and bureaucracy involved in issuing new securities. 
 The FSC, for its part, wants to make the market more attractive to retail investors by significantly easing the tax regime. 
 &quot;We want to stimulate individual investments into Russian stocks by lowering rates on operations ... and reducing brokerage companies' expenditures,&quot; Kostikov said.
 He also supported the FSC's initiative to introduce new instruments such as Russian Depositary Receipts, which would allow Russian investors to buy foreign stocks.
 According to FSC figures, there are now 58 local mutual funds operating in Russia, in contrast with 1997 when there were just seven. But the amount of assets remains low at a mere 10.8 billion rubles ($340 million), while the number of retail investors is 1.1 million - less than 1 percent of the national population.
 To make the market more attractive to institutional and foreign investors, the FSC will continue its efforts to boost the transparency of publicly traded companies and set higher professional standards in the market. One means to this end will be a new law on insider trading.
 Also, in line with global efforts, the government has approved an FSC initiative under which local companies would be barred from working with the same auditor for more than five years. An auditor's income from one client would not be allowed to exceed 10 percent of total earnings. 
 The government, which sees the shift to international-accounting standards as a high priority, confirmed its commitment to improving disclosure of information and protecting investors' rights.

TITLE: Duma Knocks Back Plans for Reform at Energy Monopoly
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma on Wednesday voted to postpone until Dec. 18 the crucial second reading of a package of bills that would allow for a controversial energy-sector restructuring.
 
Supporters of power monopoly Unified Energy Systems actually cheered the three-week delay.
 UES chief Anatoly Chubais said that if the reading were held in spring - as opponents of the reform had lobbied - it would actually delay the reform by five years since Duma deputies are unlikely to pass it ahead of parliamentary elections in 2003 and presidential elections in 2004.
 He had said before the vote that &quot;if the second reading is postponed until Dec. 18, for us, actually, it means that we walked out from the latest battle with almost no losses.&quot;
 The delay gives additional time to work on the numerous amendments to the bills, he said. 
 There are 1,800 amendments to the bills, according to the pro-Kremlin Unity party.
 Last week, four pro-Kremlin centrist factions - Unity, Fatherland-All Russia, Russia's Regions and People's Deputy - proposed that the second reading of the bills be postponed, saying that they require further adjustments.
 The reading had originally been scheduled for Nov. 29.
 &quot;The date [Dec.18] was set according to official constraints as the Duma committee for energy, transport and communications could not complete the work on all amendments by Nov. 29,&quot; Reuters quoted Sergei Ivanenko, deputy head of the liberal Yabloko party, as saying Wednesday.
 Ivanenko said that lawmakers could still change the date if President Vladimir Putin gives the signal.
 &quot;Putin has not identified his position yet; that's why the Duma majority doesn't know how to vote,&quot; he said. &quot;My forecast is that, after Dec. 18, there will be some other day in December, then some other day in January.&quot;
 Putin had met with liberal Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky last week to discuss the electricity reform. 
 Yavlinsky said Tuesday on TVS television that Putin ruled to stop the reform.
 Yabloko had joined the Communist and Agrarian factions in condemning the bills before the first reading in October.

TITLE: Ilim Pulp Prepares Share Swap, Restructuring
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ilim Pulp Enterprise announced major restructuring plans at a press conference on Tuesday. The plans involve a share swap unifying shares in its subsidiaries as shares in the head corporation.
 
Ilim Pulp Enterprise, one of the ten largest pulp producers in the world, manufactures 61 percent of the pulp produced in Russia and 77 percent of Russian cardboard. The company's total turnover in 2002 is expected to be $1 billion and it employs a workforce of around 50,000.
 At present, the corporation comprises Kotlas Pulp and Paper Mill, Bratsk Mill, Ust-Ilimsk Forest Integrated Industrial Plant, St. Petersburg Cardboard Printing Integrated Plant and 42 lumber companies.
 Following completion of the planned restructuring, the Ilim Pulp Enterprise public company will become the head company, though it will be divided into four branches, Mikhail Moshiashvili, managing director of Ilim Pulp, said at the press conference. 
 Ilim Pulp will also be officially opening the Gofropack Plant located in Kommunar in the Leningrad Oblast on Dec. 6. Ilim Pulp has invested $15 million in equipping the facility on the base of the already existing Cardboard-Printing Integrated Plant. 
 &quot;This is one of the fastest developing industries in the Leningrad Oblast, as demand for cardboard-packaging materials is steadily growing,&quot; Valentin Sidorin, spokesperson for the Leningrad Oblast administation, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
 Moshiashvili said that the Ilim Pulp corporation is planning to invest another $800 million in developing its production facilities and in new plants already under construction. Total output is expected to reach 3.5 million tons as a result of the investments. 
 In addition to these developments, a source within the Central Bank who wished to remain nameless said that Ilim Pulp is currently preparing the documentation to acquire an Irish sales company. 
 Tit Korshikov, spokesperson for Ilim Pulp, confirmed in a telephone interview that &quot;we are planning to buy a company that will manage our sales abroad.&quot; 
 Commenting on the motivation behind the planned restructuring and share swap, Moshiashvili said that &quot;at the end of 2004, we are planning to enter the international market to attract foreign investment, so we need a unified corporation.&quot; 
 Moshiashvili also said at the press conference that Ilim Pulp is planning to place an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.

TITLE: Car-Insurance Rates Proposed
AUTHOR: By Pavel Miledin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - Drivers in St. Petersburg and Moscow will have to pay considerably more than expected for compulsory third-party car insurance, according to the Finance Ministry.
 
The tariff rates, which the ministry announced Monday, are up to 6 1/2 times greater than the $20 per year originally forecast.
 All car owners have to insure their accident liabilities as of July next year under a new law signed by President Vladimir Putin in April.
 The liability limit will be 400,000 rubles ($12,570). Maximum payout for injury will be 240,000 rubles ($7,540), while damage to property will be capped at 160,000 rubles ($5,030).
 There are about 27 million privately owned vehicles in Russia.
 Under the law, the insurance rates must be calculated by the Finance Ministry and approved by the cabinet. About 1 year ago, State Duma Deputy Vladimir Tarachev, one of the authors of the law, said that the policy should cost the same as a tank of gas - about $20. Insurance companies then presented their calculations, by which the basic cost of a policy for a private individual would be $22.70, but loadings for Moscow and St. Petersburg residents would boost premiums to $78.80 and $72, respectively.
 Nevertheless, the Finance Ministry's initial calculations - yet to be approved by the government - exceeded the hopes of even the insurers themselves. The basic cost of an insurance policy is proposed at 2,100 rubles ($66), climbing to 2,950 rubles for enterprises and organizations. Officials propose a loading factor starting at 2 for Moscow and dropping to 0.6 for smaller towns. For St. Petersburg, the loading factor would be 1.6.
 The cost of mandatory private car insurance in St. Petersburg would be $106. A young, newly qualified driver would have to pay $190. With driving experience of less than two years, the basic cost is expected to be 20 percent higher and 50 percent higher if the driver is younger than 23.
 &quot;This is a little less than the commercial cost, but it isn't critical,&quot; said Nadezhda Martyanova, general director of insurance company MAKS.
 The ministry's proposals, which were sent to the government on Nov. 15, are far from final and will most likely be returned to the ministry for additional work, Interfax quoted a government source as saying Tuesday.
 &quot;There are a number of serious questions remaining in connection with the proposals presented,&quot; said the source, citing a lack of agreement between the ministry and other departments, including the Interior Ministry, as well as the question of insurance for government vehicles.

TITLE: Retail Sector Pumped Up By Growing Middle Class
AUTHOR: By Megan Merrill
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - With fewer bills to pay, members of the middle class have plenty to spend on clothes, appliances and audio-video equipment, among other things, driving up the consumer-goods market in the process, analysts say.
 
Utility and housing costs are lower compared to Western countries, allowing members of St. Petersburg and Moscow's middle class to spend a larger percentage of their income on consumer goods, Greg Thain, chairperson of the Interactive Research Group, said in a recent interview.
 Companies need to keep up with that demand if they want to survive, said Alexander Utochkin, an IRG analyst.
 &quot;We believe that only those domestic companies that can satisfy the increasing demands of the Russian middle class will succeed,&quot; he said.
 The middle class &quot;is of high paying capacity, actively consumes high-quality goods and services and makes the most attractive segment of the market for advertisers,&quot; COMCON, another research company, wrote earlier this year in a report.
 Members of the middle class on average spend the largest proportion of their income on food, 17 percent, while clothing and shoes took up 10 percent. Education expenses made up 7 percent of income, while 5 percent went toward household goods, which includes appliances, audio-video equipment and furniture, according to COMCON. The average member of the middle class saves 9 percent of their income.
 Expert magazine and Monitoring.ru, which conduct joint surveys on the Russian middle class, said that members of the middle class spend most of their spare cash on clothing, shoes, furniture, household appliances and audio-video equipment.
 Definitions of the middle class and estimations of its size and spending power vary.
 A Russian middle-class family has a monthly income of $300 to $2,000, Vakatova said. Some 15 percent of Moscow's population aged 18 to 54 and about 6 percent of the country as a whole are middle class, she said.
 Expert and Monitoring.ru said that the middle class is made up of families whose combined yearly income ranges from $6,000 to $40,000, estimating that 9.5 million to 10.5 million families in Russia are middle class and up to another 2 million are expected to earn enough to join the middle class by the end of 2002.
 IRG's Utochkin did not define the middle class on the basis of income alone, saying that the group is made up of people who spend less than 35 percent to 40 percent of their income on essential commodities.
 Per capita income of the middle class ranges from $300 to $5,000 a month in Moscow, making up about 40 percent to 45 percent of the whole population, he said.
 In the rest of the country, members of the middle class make $200 to $2,000 a month, Utochkin said, and only 20 percent to 25 percent of households fall into this category.
 Expert and Monitoring.ru, furthermore, said that the middle class is made up of two subgroups: a rapidly growing lower middle class of families with a combined yearly income of $6,000 to $12,000, and a slowly growing upper middle class of families with a combined income of $12,000 to $40,000 per family per year.
 The lower middle class is composed of 6.5 million to 7.5 million families and the members of this group, for the most part, work as middle managers, engineers, specialists and other professions, Expert and Monitoring.ru said. They can easily afford to buy clothes and everyday goods, but only once a year make a big purchase such as a car or furniture.
 The upper middle class has 3 million to 3.5 million families and is growing slowly, with many families struggling to maintain their position in the group, Expert said. They are often directors of small or medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs.
 Expert had forecasted last year that the middle class's real income would grow by about 40 percent in the next five years, boosting its spending power, and the company said in its report earlier this year that spending on real estate, furniture and household appliances would increase.

TITLE: Banks Reveal 'Financial Supermarket' Plans
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Having catered to corporate clients for years, local banks are now turning to private customers in search of fresh pastures, with three commercial banks announcing ambitions plans to expand this sector of their business in the last few weeks alone. 
 
At a press conference last week, the NIKoil financial corporation announced that it would be creating a banking-insurance group with the aim of launching a chain of &quot;financial supermarkets.&quot; 
 Lyudmila Shabalikina, chairperson at Avtobank, which will join with NIKoil to create the group, said that over 220 financial supermarkets would be opened by the group over the next year. 
 At a meeting with journalists last week, Dmitry Lebedyev, chairperson of the Menatep St. Peterburg bank, said that the bank had begun developing a new strategy for retail-banking services. The new conception being developed will include financial &quot;mini-markets,&quot; which will set up at the bank's existing branches. &quot;These mini-markets will supply banking services as well as other financial instruments for investment with varying degrees of risks and profit levels,&quot; Lebedyev said. 
 Earlier in the month, Ruslan Khvesyuk, chairperson of Alfa-Bank, announced that the bank would develop its retail business, with the management envisaging a new chain of retail financial supermarkets being created in the near future.
 &quot;These supermarkets will offer investment-fund products and insurance services, as well as banking products. You will also be able to pay for communal services, telephone bills and so on, in the same place,&quot; said Vitaly Ryabov, spokesperson for the St. Petersburg branch of Alfa-Bank. 
 Sberbank is currently the leader in the private-banking sector, with customers reassured by the guarantees that the state provides to the bank. Nevertheless, banking analysts are predicting that other banks will rapidly develop their services to private customers in the near future, actively attempting to attract such account holders. 
 Estimates as to the amount of cash being kept by the Russian population &quot;under their mattresses&quot; run from $50 billion to $70 billion, a key reason being the collapse of the banking sector following the 1998 financial crisis. As a result of that crisis, Russians remain wary of handing over their cash to banks. 
 A local survey carried out by the COMCON St. Petersburg research company, found that of those over the age of 16, 21.1 percent never use banks at all.

TITLE: Krasnoyarsk Makes Cut in Electricity Tariffs
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Krasnoyarsk region has slashed household electricity bills by 15 percent in what it said was an attempt to ease the burden of utility bills, once subsidies to consumers are all but phased out next year.
 
The cut, which fulfills a campaign promise made by new Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Khloponin, will cost regional power supplier Krasnoyarskenergo about 150 million rubles ($4.7 million) per month, national-power grid Unified Energy Systems said. UES owns 51 percent of Krasnoyarskenergo.
 &quot;It is a clearly political decision; we understand that he [Khloponin] made promises,&quot; UES spokesperson Andrei Yegorov said Tuesday.
 The Krasnoyarsk regional energy commission, which sets tariffs on heat and electricity and is de facto subordinated to the governor, ordered that household rates be cut from 0.54 rubles per kilowatt hour to 0.46 rubles per kwh starting last Friday.
 Tariffs for industrial customers and state-funded enterprises remain unchanged.
 &quot;While we are following a strict budget, regional power suppliers should share the responsibility of social welfare,&quot; the Krasnoyarsk administration said in a statement.
 Khloponin, whose election as governor was upheld by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, inherited a region with 11 billion rubles ($3.5 million) in debt - 2 billion rubles of which is owed to Krasnoyarskenergo. About 2,500 companies are in different stages of bankruptcy and teachers and doctors have not been paid for months.
 &quot;The region is in an economic and political crisis,&quot; Khloponin said shortly after his election in late September.
 Khloponin declared on the pre-election campaign trail that residents were being overcharged for electricity, and he promised to reduce the tariffs.
 Last week, he proposed an economic rejuvenation program tied to a strict regional budget for next year. The program included plans to cut subsidies on household-utility bills from 60 percent to 10 percent in 2003.
 The Krasnoyarsk administration said that reducing electricity tariffs would help cushion the impact of the higher utility expenses.
 The rate deduction is only the second in Russia since the 1998 financial crisis. In 2000, Irkutskenergo cut tariffs for industrial customers by 40 percent.
 Renaissance Capital said Tuesday that the cut is bad news for Krasnoyarskenergo. Norilsk Nickel, the largest company in Krasnoyarsk, recently become a large Krasnoyarskenergo shareholder by snapping up shares on the open market. Analysts say that Norilsk Nickel may have accumulated up to a 40-percent stake.
 &quot;The decision of the REC [regional energy commission] seems to be a signal that, after the recent appointment of ex-Norilsk Nickel CEO Alexander Khloponin as governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, the energo has become particularly vulnerable to political pressure from the regional government,&quot; Renaissance said.

TITLE: Just Why NATO Should Stay - And Change
AUTHOR: by Charles Grant
TEXT: NATO adapted well after the end of the Cold War. An organization that had been focused on collective defense found fresh things to do: spreading security and stability to new members and partners in Central Europe, applying force - against Bosnian Serbs and then Serbia proper - to impose peace in Bosnia and Kosovo, and then peacekeeping in the Balkans.
 
Since Sept. 11, however, NATO has faced something of an existential crisis. The United States chose to fight the Afghan war largely on its own, rather than through NATO or alongside European allies. Some officials in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush have done little to hide their disdain for the alliance. The imminent enlargement of NATO, with seven Central European states invited to join at the Prague summit this week, will reduce its military cohesion. And the recent deal to establish the NATO-Russia Council has reinforced the perception that the alliance is becoming a largely political body rather than a serious military organization.
 So why do we need NATO? The alliance is worth preserving, and reforming, for three reasons. The first is that NATO has a political role to play in providing a forum for North Americans, Europeans and Russians to talk about matters of common concern, such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, missile defense and the Balkans. NATO helps to keep the United States directly involved in European affairs. Indeed, it remains the only important multilateral organization that ties North Americans to Europeans.
 Furthermore, no other organization is so well-suited to engaging Russia's security establishment. Russia's armed forces are in bad need of reform: Successive governments since the end of the Cold War have tried to modernize Russia's under-equipped, ill-disciplined and ineffective forces, without much success. The NATO-Russia Council could provide the channels through which NATO members can offer help and advice on the modernization of the Russian defense establishment. In the long run, if President Vladimir Putin succeeds in making Russia a more &quot;Western&quot; country, and if the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy becomes more solid, NATO's political organization is likely to evolve into an organization that brings together three distinct units: the United States, the European Union and Russia.
 NATO's second role should be to promote a single market in armaments and defense technology. Worries about national security, as well as pork-barrel politics, have prevented the creation of a common market in armaments, even among the EU countries. If NATO could establish common rules on export controls, technology transfer, security of supply, monopolies and fair procurement, the allies would be more likely to trust each other and open their markets. A single armaments market would make it easier for NATO forces to use common equipment and thus work together more effectively. The NATO defense ministers need to create a new, high-level body to promote a common defense market.
 As Russia moves closer to the alliance, and gradually wins the confidence of NATO governments, some of its defense industries could become integrated with those of Europe and America. Despite almost zero domestic demand for the past decade, the Russian aerospace industry can still offer impressive technology and expertise, for example in the science of aerodynamics, transport aircraft, rocket launchers and many components for aircraft. (It is encouraging that EADS, the Franco-German aerospace company, has recently agreed on a program of technical collaboration with Kaskol, a dynamic and privately owned Russian defense company.)
 However, NATO needs to be more than just a forum for discussion and an agency for promoting armaments cooperation. Its third role should be military. NATO's military organization encourages &quot;interoperability&quot; among the armed forces of NATO members and partners: It aims for them to work alongside each other more easily, whether in peacekeeping or fighting wars. NATO's achievements in this area leave much to be desired, but it has promoted common operating procedures, technical standards and rules of engagement. Coalitions as diverse as the U.S.-led army that fought the Gulf War in 1991 and the European peacekeeping force in Kabul in 2002 - though neither was a NATO mission - could not have been so effective without NATO having fostered the habit of working together.
 NATO needs its military organization for two principal reasons. First, NATO's skills as an experienced and proficient provider of peacekeeping are still required. The EU may eventually take over the peacekeeping mission in Macedonia, and perhaps in the longer run in Bosnia. But the fraught situation in Kosovo requires the involvement of NATO, and thus, implicitly, of the United States. The Russians have similarly made an important contribution to peacekeeping in the Balkans, and they are still needed. In other parts of the world, too - for example, post-Hussein Iraq, or post-intifada Palestine - there would be a need for professional multinational peacekeeping. The forces in such places may or may not be branded &quot;NATO,&quot; but that body is likely to be heavily involved in their management and organization.
 Second, NATO needs to develop a new military role, as a provider of multinational forces that could fight at short notice in a high-intensity conflict such as that in Afghanistan. During the course of 2002, Bush's National Security Council developed this idea, and the Pentagon unveiled plans for a NATO rapid response force in September. Such a force would be available at a week or two's notice, and contain perhaps 20,000 elite troops from several NATO countries, including the United States.
 One rationale for the response force is that it would encourage U.S. commanders to take up European offers of military help. During the Afghan conflict, they were reluctant to accept European offers. They would probably be more willing to make use of European forces if NATO - rather than national governments - packaged and vetted those forces. The second rationale is to encourage Europeans to do more to develop their military capabilities. America's NATO allies are likely to agree to establish the response force, for they know that if they wish to keep the United States engaged in NATO, and thus in Europe, they need to adapt the alliance so that it is useful to Washington. If NATO cannot come up with a real fighting force, NATO will not be that important to the United States.
 Many people in Russia still regard NATO as a hostile organization. It is true that NATO's area is now expanding up to Russia's borders. However, NATO has changed a lot since the days of the Cold War, and it is continuing to evolve.
 Its raison d'etre is no longer to oppose Russia. It is becoming a European security organization in which Russia needs to play an important part and discuss common challenges and concerns. Nor should Russia be concerned that NATO retains a military function. As Russia develops its links with the alliance, it will benefit from joining in many of NATO's military activities. Furthermore, one merit of NATO is that it channels America's energies in a multilateral direction. The reason EU countries like NATO is that it makes it harder for the United States to act unilaterally. Russia should learn to appreciate NATO for the same reasons.
 
 <i>Charles Grant is director of the Centre for European Reform in London. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Slim Chance That Cool Heads Will Prevail
TEXT: LAST week, the Federation Council approved amendments to Russia's laws on terrorism and the mass media that could lead to significant restrictions on freedom of speech. Saddest of all, the press and the authorities let another chance slip to lay the basis for a civilized relationship. And all they really had to do was stop and think.
 
Instead, they locked horns yet again before the shots fired at the Theater na Dubrovke had stopped ringing. The press charged that the authorities had made mistakes, overlooked the obvious and taken action too late. The authorities countered by admonishing the foreign press and beating the Russian press over the head with these new amendments.
 Did the authorities deserve criticism? Without doubt. But, for the most part, the criticism seemed aimed less at working out what could have been done to prevent the crisis and save lives, but rather more at boosting ratings by trading on tragedy and settling old scores. Did the press deserve to be reprimanded for its antics during the crisis - for doing things, often on live television, that would be unthinkable in a democratic society? Of course.
 Journalists from Russia's leading television and radio stations and newspapers gathered last week at an open committee on media policy at the Soros Foundation to discuss the charges that the government has leveled at the press. But, rather than take exception to these charges, the journalists came up with an additional list of violations of journalistic ethics that the government had overlooked.
 But why did the government have to act on its legitimate security concerns by ramming a package of crude and extremely careless amendments through the Federal Assembly? You don't have to be a flag-waving supporter of the ways of the Russian media to be horrified by the provisions in these amendments. Not to mention that the government's haste has rendered meaningless the journalistic community's own efforts to bring its practices into line with civilized professional norms.
 Just how effective these efforts have been is another question. Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who attended the Soros Foundation meeting, said that, if the press was so concerned about changes in the law, it should prove to the government that it will live up to its proclaimed intention to abide by internationally accepted norms of journalistic ethics. As immediately became clear, no one in the media could give such a guarantee. The press doesn't trust itself. It's much easier for the mass media to get into another scuffle with the state than it is for them to reach agreement among themselves.
 Unfortunately, last month's terrible tragedy made us no wiser, kinder or more tolerant. We forgot that the media and the government are made up of ordinary people who found themselves in an extremely stressful situation during the &quot;Nord Ost&quot; crisis. Does the memory of the dead not require us to work together to learn from our mistakes?
 Whatever might have been, the situation now is that the authorities and the press are even more malicious than before. We are caught in a vicious circle: Mistrust begets a lack of professionalism, which in turn inspires mistrust. If a tragedy on the order of the &quot;Nord Ost&quot; crisis has only made us more belligerent, rather than more thoughtful, then I'm afraid we are preordained to live not by social contract, but on the basis of mutual intimidation.
 In the short time remaining before President Vladimir Putin signs the new amendments into law, both the press and the government have a slim window of opportunity to act on Lesin's advice.
 
 <i>Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.sreda-mag.ru) </i>

TITLE: the song remains the same
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although it is a relatively new addition to the local music scene, Iva Nova has a familiar sound - and look - as it formed around a nucleus of three former members of all-female folk-punk sextet Babslei.
 
The trio quit the group in May, for &quot;artistic reasons.&quot; Babslei's remaining three members - plus two additions - have continued performing under the old moniker.
 &quot;The style is the same - you could say there are two similar bands now,&quot; says Iva Nova's drummer, Katya Fyodorova, who founded Babslei in 1997.
 The trio of ex-Babslei members - Fyodorova, accordion player Lena Zhornik and guitarist Inna Lishenkevich - has been joined by two new members, singer Vera Ogaryova and bassist Lena Stankevich.
 Ogaryova used to sing country covers in English with local bar bands, but she had previous experience with Slavic folk music through singing Bulgarian traditional songs with an amateur choir while going to college. From that period, she brought the Bulgarian folk song &quot;Rodopskaya&quot; to Iva Nova's repertoire.
 &quot;[Ogaryova]'s voice is the opposite of [Babslei's singer Natalya Kordyukova], so you can feel the difference at once,&quot; says Fyodorova. &quot;She has a low voice.&quot;
 Apart from vocals, Ogaryova has contributed effectively to Iva Nova's song-writing. &quot;We'd always experienced problems with lyrics [in Babslei],&quot; says Fyodorova. &quot;We played folk songs, but when we wanted our own lyrics, problems arose - we struggled, making up line after line. But Ogaryova started to write very decent lyrics at once.&quot;
 Iva Nova first appeared with a low-profile, brief set at Orlandina on July 21 - after just two weeks of rehearsals - and made its full-fledged live debut at Moloko on Sept. 7.
 &quot;We were in a hurry. We got together in a week, wrote a number of songs in a month,&quot; says Fyodorova. &quot;If we disappeared abruptly, then it would be hard to put up with people asking 'what is this Iva Nova?' But now, it's 'where are the three girls?' 'We are here, here's our disk.' The plan was to act quickly.&quot;
 Since its live debut, Iva Nova has played over a dozen concerts at local underground clubs, as well as in Moscow and Yaroslavl.
 From Babslei, Iva Nova inherited four songs, written not long before the split and only performed in concerts. &quot;We had eight songs not included in the contract, so we simply divided them evenly, left four to Babslei and took another four, based roughly on who wrote what,&quot; says Fyodorova. Iva Nova's repertoire now includes 16 songs, making for a 60-minute live performance.
 Bassist Stankevich, who has played with Lena Stogova, Tigry &amp; Pchyoly and Kiparis, turned out to be a strong player, who brought much to Iva Nova's sound, making it tighter and heavier.
 &quot;I knew [Stankevich] even before Babslei, and she was first in line for the bassist slot,&quot; says Fyodorova. &quot;We said it would be great to have our own all-female band but, because we were drinking, everything went a bit hazy, and I forgot about it. Then I met her again in Moloko by chance, and said 'Hey, we're getting a band together again.'&quot;
 Originally, Iva Nova looked for a violinist, but dropped the idea. &quot;We tried a violinist, but then thought that it sounds fine without it. The sound is rich enough. [Guitarist Lishenkevich] has improved her playing while [Zhornik] plays accordion more now. So everything is there.&quot;
 To Babslei's trademark folk-punk, Iva Nova has added a strong element of art rock. &quot;The sound has become heavier, more powerful,&quot; says Fyodorova, who also plays with ZGA, Nikolai Sudnik's experimental noise band, and was invited to replace the ill drummer of the legendary Kraut-rock band Faust for a festival performance in London in May.
 &quot;We are trying to get away from <i>chastushki </i>[two-line or four-line traditional humorous ditties], but the folk sound remains anyway,&quot; says Fyodorova. &quot;We're just addicted to it.&quot;
 When the trio left Babslei, they also left its label, Bomba-Piter, which was responsible for Babslei's first, and so far only, album, 2001's &quot;Yeldyrina Sloboda.&quot; Iva Nova has put out a demo CD, recorded live at a rehearsal, but has yet to get a recording contract. &quot;You have to have money to make a record - somebody will probably approach us at a concert, as usual,&quot; says Fyodorova.
 The band refused when it was suggested, in typical Russian music-industry style, that it pay $50 to be included in a compilation.
 &quot;Nobody listens to compilations; they only have some unknown bands,&quot; says Fyodorova. &quot;What use is that to us?&quot;
 
 <i>
Iva Nova plays Moloko on Nov. 30. Links: www.iva-nova.by.ru </i>

TITLE: an up-to-the-minute festival
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;Experimental classical music for intellectuals&quot; is how St. Petersburg composer Alexander Radvilovich describes Zvukovyye Puti (&quot;Sound Ways&quot;), the festival that he has run for 13 years. The event, established in 1989, shines a spotlight on contemporary classical music, something not currently appreciated by Russian orchestras. In addition, because Russian concert goers do not seem to be able to digest a great deal of new music, the festival is aimed at a rather limited audience.
 
This year's festival, the 14th, includes concerts at the Glinka Philharmonic, the SS Peter and Paul Church on Nevsky Prospect, and the House of Composers on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa. The festival kicked off last week, and runs through Sunday.
 When the festival started, in 1989 as a biannual event, the organizers aimed to showcase 20th-century works that, although they may already be well known in the West and have even attained the status as 20th-century classics, were not performed in Russia for ideological reasons. This year's festival includes music through the present day - the youngest composer featured is 21-year-old Ilya Ostromogilsky, a fourth-year student at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory.
 On Nov. 23, &quot;Cage Session&quot; sees a day at the House of Composers devoted to cult U.S. composer John Cage.
 &quot;I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music,&quot; Cage once wrote. &quot;He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' So I said, 'I'll beat my head against that wall.'&quot; 
 Cage's best-known composition is 4'33''. It is played on the piano and is divided into three movements, although it is quite hard to tell where one ends and the next one begins, as there is no beat in the piece, which lasts 4:33 - hence the title. The pianist uses a stopwatch to control the tempo. 
 &quot;Cage Session&quot; starts at noon with a talk about the composer. Musicologists from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin and Tver will discuss Cage's heritage and his influence on contemporary American music. The discussion will be followed by a short concert, including &quot;Three Songs for Voice and Closed Piano,&quot; &quot;Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos&quot; and &quot;Radio Music.&quot; At 5:30 p.m., the session will continue with the Russian premiere of the 1990 U.S. film &quot;John Cage: The Man and the Myth,&quot; followed by a longer concert from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., which includes works from throughout his career.
 The festival's closing concert, on Nov. 24 at the Glinka Philharmonic, is entitled &quot;Oh, the Scent of Those Old Times.&quot; While the title may sound old-fashioned and very sentimental, it is, in fact, a line from Schoenberg's 1911 piece &quot;Pierrot Lunaire.&quot;
 Schoenberg's music is featured at almost every &quot;Sound Ways.&quot; &quot;Pierrot Lunaire,&quot; written for speaker and chamber orchestra, received its Russian premiere at the festival several years ago. 
 &quot;[The concert's] title, naturally, reflects nostalgia for [Schoenberg], but it also fits the idea of the concert quite well,&quot; Radvilovich said. &quot;The program juxtaposes works created in various styles of the past.&quot; Thus, Sergei Slonimsky's 1975 &quot;Troubadors' Songs&quot; for soprano, tenor and an ensemble of early-music instruments harks back to the 12th and 13th centuries; Edward Sielicki was inspired by Bach's organ chorales when he wrote his variations for a solo oboe; Edison Denisov's &quot;Variations on A Theme by Schubert for Cello and Piano&quot; recalls the Romantic era; while Radvilovich's &quot;Der Lesende&quot; for soprano and a chamber ensemble, which sets verse by Rainer Maria Rilke, is a nod to the modern era.
 On Friday, the House of Composers hosts &quot;Soli,&quot; in which soloists from the New European Wind Ensemble perform solo works for the bass clarinet, horn and bassoon. The quintet draws its members from across Europe - flautist Magda Schwerzmann from Sweden, oboist Kazimierz Dawidek from Poland, bassoonist Georgio Mandolezi from Italy, clarinetist Matthias Mueller from Germany, and horn player Raul Diaz from Spain. 
 Every year, &quot;Sound Ways&quot; used to hold seminars by prominent composers, who hold lectures and presentations and give master-classes to Conservatory students and anyone else interested in learning more about new music. This year, however, there won't be a seminar.
 &quot;It's sad to say, but I have noticed that the students' interest in seminars has been dropping - even though the fee is much less than it would be in Europe,&quot; says Radvilovich. &quot;We have decided to take a break from the seminars.&quot;

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: At the height of a concert onslaught, this week is as full of entertainment as the last two, if of more uneven quality. It is also notable for many postponements, cancellations and sudden additions.
 
This weekend's schedules at several clubs have been confused by Moscow folk-rock singer <strong>Inna Zhelannaya, </strong>who postponed her local club concerts. According to her spokesperson, Zhelannaya and her band had problems &quot;finding a hotel&quot; in St. Petersburg.
 One of the best-known performers on the international world-music scene - Peter Gabriel included her track &quot;Dalshe&quot; in his &quot;One World&quot; compilation - Zhelannaya's local club tour is now expected to start at JFC Jazz Club on Nov. 29. 
 However, the other clubs that are now looking for last-minute replacements for this week's gaps do not give any definite dates.
 Zhelannaya's band, called Alliance in Russia - after the pop band Zhelannaya started out with in 1989 - and the Highlanders in the rest of the world, sounds sophisticated yet somewhat depressing.
 Alternatively, Tuva's fabulous <strong>Yat-kha</strong>, which is scheduled to play St. Petersburg on the same date, can take you through a true catharsis, thanks to its explosive blend of Tuvinian throat singing, folk instruments and contemporary electronica.
 The <i>yat-kha</i><strong> </strong>is a Tuvinian folk instrument resembling a long zither, occasionally used by the band's vocalist and guitarist Albeit Kuveizin.
 The news broke last week when a poster promoting the show appeared on the wall near Fish Fabrique - the only poster this journalist has seen.
 According to the poster, Yat-kha will play at PORT Club on Nov. 29, but the venue's own site announces a contest for the best song about St. Petersburg scheduled for the very same day. 
 <strong>Pyotr Mamonov, </strong>former frontman of the now-legendary Moscow postpunk band Zvuki Mu and now a performance artist, will compensate for his show earlier this month that was postponed due to illness.
 Called &quot;Shokoladny Pushkin&quot; (&quot;Chocolate Pushkin&quot;), Mamonov's one-person show is difficult to define in terms of genre, featuring songs, shouts, hisses and lots of twisted gestures and poses.
 Mamonov will perform at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture this Friday.
 Despite reports that <strong>Boris Grebenshchikov </strong>has cancelled all Akvarium's Russian concerts in December, he will play in St. Petersburg next month, as he confirmed to The St. Petersburg Times last week.
 Akvarium's traditional Christmas concert will take place at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture on Dec. 21.
 Before that, Grebenshchikov, who is now in India, and Akvarium will embark on a four-date U.S. tour, including Los Angeles (Dec. 8), San Francisco (11), Seattle (13) and Portland (14). 
 According to Akvarium's official Web site, www.aquarium.ru, all the concerts will &quot;go under the motto 'Roza i Inzhenery Khaosa' ('Rose and the Engineers of Chaos').&quot;
 Local Beatles fans, headed by Nikolai Vasin, Russia's No. 1 Beatles fan, will commemorate <strong>George Harrison, </strong>who died on Nov. 29, 2001, on Nov. 27, which is actually Jimi Hendrix's birthday.
 &quot;I can't do it on [Nov. 29], it's too mournful,&quot; says Vasin. &quot;Instead, it will be on Nov. 27, which we celebrate as the Day of the Electric Guitarist,&quot; says Vasin.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: after hours with soviet top dogs
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Standing at the top of the stairs leading down to the entrance and staring at the simple sign, lettered in a traditional script, I found myself wondering how I had managed to end up in this situation again. But a peak through the door allayed my fears.
 
As a restaurant reviewer, I've had more than my share of bad luck with less-than-accessible locations that turned out not to be worth the work required to get there. Getting to Politburo, which is located on Ul. Yefimova, about 20 meters away from the McDonald's location on Sennaya Ploshchad, had definitely taken some work. While descriptions of what the square will look like once the massive construction project underway there is finished are intriguing, the melting snow and the rain of the previous two days had turned the whole area into a quagmire, and the fenced-off areas had actually made getting around tougher than I had found it to be in the past. (Short of planting land mines, I would not have believed it possible.)
 But, making our way through the eatery to a table near the back of the second room, my dinner companion and I were pleasantly surprised. Politburo is another of the myriad &quot;Soviet kitsch&quot; spots to have opened up in the city in recent years, but it has managed to do it in such a way that the room still feels fairly bright and open (no small accomplishment, given its basement location.) A number of the posters on the basic white walls were immediately familiar to me, as they had adorned my own walls back in my university days, and the wooden beams along the ceiling and red trim on the walls make sure that the atmosphere doesn't seem too antiseptic. The <i>nomenklatura</i>-style portrait photos fixed to the ceiling beams were a novel touch.
 After ordering beer - Klinskoye (22 rubles, $0.70) for my companion and a Nevskoye (28 rubles, $0.90) for myself - we began flipping through the menu. My companion noted right away that Politburo has largely stayed in character with its menu - the dishes offered being what one might have expected to find in a Soviet-era <i>stolovaya. </i>The first page of the menu gets right to the point with vodka, and we had to work through a number of drink sections (each headed by a title page bearing a Soviet-era advertisement) before we finally got to the food. We then discovered that Politburo has, essentially, put together a pub menu, Soviet style. There are beer snacks - a basic selection including peanuts, pistachios and calamari (8 to 15 rubles, $0.25 to $0.50), a selection of <i>buterbrody </i>- slices of bread with salmon and red caviar being among the offered toppings (10 to 30 rubles, $0.30 to $1.00) as well as salads, soups and main dishes.
 From the soup list, which is priced between 15 and 40 rubles ($0.50 and $1.25), my companion opted for the shchi (25 rubles, $0.80), which was done with a chicken base and, although it seemed a little thin to me, was spicy and received positive marks from my companion. My solyanka (40 rubles) was a much heartier offering of meat, potatoes and other vegetables in a hearty broth and did the trick in chasing away some of the chill from the rain.
 Moving on, my <i>stolichny </i>salad (40 rubles) was a wonderfully fresh-smelling concoction of cucumber chunks and peas with a generous amount of chicken accompanied by that ever-present denizen of St. Petersburg salads - mayonnaise. I was pleased to discover that the fresh aroma from the salad was not betrayed by its taste. My companion's Greek salad (40 rubles) was less of a success. The feta cheese was tasty but, along with the lettuce, cucumber and olives, was overpowered by the vinegar in the dressing.
 For mains, my companion went with the <i>zharkoe po-domashnemy </i>(37 rubles, $1.15), a stew-like mixture of fried pork with potatoes in a soup-like broth. Although it didn't draw raves, she said it hit the spot. My <i>svinina farshirovanaya </i>(85 rubles, $2.65), which was served with mashed potatoes, was a mixture of ground pork, cheese and tomatoes wrapped in a baked slice of the same meat. The outer roll of meat was a little tough, which may have been the result of getting to it late, more because of our conversation than a fair criticism of the dish itself.
 To sum up, Politburo doesn't provide the culinary satisfaction you would expect from a restaurant, but it stands up just fine as a pub in which to throw back a few brews and have a bite while getting together with friends. While it's annoying picking your way through the construction and muddy puddles to get there, inside there's a great atmosphere to kick back and relax. Throw in the prices, which can only be described as cheap, and it really provides an excellent option as a hangout for the gang after work.
 
 <i>
Politburo. 1 Ul. Yefimova. Open daily, 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Menu in Russian only. No credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, with beer: 381 rubles ($12). </i>

TITLE: MKhAT heads north
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Since it was founded by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1898, Moscow's Khudozhestvenny Theater, or MKhAT, has visited St. Petersburg more than 50 times, with the first tour taking place in 1901.
 
The theater last came to the city in 1993, when Oleg Yefremov was its artistic director - but it was already a different MKhAT from the original. The theater split in 1988, when some actors left the theater to establish a second MKhAT, led by actor Tatyana Doronina and named after Maxim Gorky. Those who stayed at the &quot;first&quot; MKhAT added Anton Chekhov's name to the theater's title. 
 Next week, the Chekhov MKhAT, led by Oleg Tabakov, is bringing four of its productions to St. Petersburg. The season will run from Nov. 29 through Dec. 11 at the Young Spectators' Theater and the Vyborgsky Palace of Culture.
 The tour kicks off with &quot;Amadeus,&quot; staged by Mark Rozovsky nearly 20 years ago. This production, an undoubted audience favorite, is one of Moscow's longest-running shows. Based on Peter Shaffer's play, the show features Tabakov himself in the role of jealous composer Antonio Salieri and Sergei Bezrukov as Mozart. &quot;Amadeus&quot; plays at the Vyborgsky Palace of Culture on Nov. 29 and 30.
 The second show will be Roman Kozak's 1997 staging of Gogol's &quot;Marriage&quot; (Dec. 3 and 4), which features Viktor Gvozditsky as Podkolesin and Alexander Kalyagin as Kochkaryov. Following this will be Vladimir Mashkov's 2001 rendition of Ray Cooney's &quot;Number 13&quot; (Dec. 6, 9 and 11), a production to which it is almost impossible to get tickets in Moscow - scalpers reportedly demand up to $500 per seat. In St. Petersburg, ticket prices vary from 100 to 3,000 rubles ($3.15 to $97.40).
 Closing the tour will be Alexander Marin's 2002 take on Alexander Vampilov's &quot;Duck Hunt,&quot; one of the most popular and frequently staged plays in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. The production plays at the Young Spectators' Theater on Dec. 8 and 10. 
 Tabakov - one of Russia's most acclaimed film and theater actors with over 70 movies under his belt, and former artistic director of Moscow's Sovremennik Theater - has been the director of Chekhov MKhAT since June 2000. In 1998, he brought the entire acting troupe of Tabakerka - a theater that he himself established - to St. Petersburg. It was an unusually large tour by any standard, involving more than 20 members in seven of the theater's recent productions. 
 Tabakov then gave up some directorial duties to the younger crowd - although the theater is still hardly cutting-edge. The tour's highlights included &quot;Your Number's Up,&quot; directed by Vladimir Mashkov, famous for his popular film &quot;Orphan of Kazan.&quot; Renowned directors Valery Fokin and Adolf Shapiro brought &quot;More Van Gogh&quot; and Maxim Gorky's &quot;The Last Ones,&quot; respectively. Other shows alien to St. Petersburg stages included &quot;Matrosskaya Tishina&quot; (&quot;Sailor's Silence&quot;), based on Alexander Galich's poety, and Aldo de Benedetti's &quot;Sublimation of Love.&quot;
 Since Tabakov took the top position at the Chekhov MKhAT, quite a number of Tabakerka shows have, naturally, become part of the theater's repertoire, and many of its actors have joined the troupe.
 At 67, Tabakov says he hasn't missed any opportunities. Asked if there is a role that he never played but always wanted, he bursts out laughing. &quot;If I want to perform a character, I just start rehearsing,&quot; he says. &quot;My next role is going to be Tartuffe [in Moliere's play of the same name], which makes me very excited.&quot; 
 Chekhov MKhAT owes a lot to St. Petersburg, as a number of the troupe's top stars were actors from the city who were seduced into a move south. The list includes Natalya Tenyakova, Sergei Yursky and Viktor Gvozditsky. However, Chekhov MKhAT's most recent St. Petersburg acquisition - the Maly Drama Theater's Pyotr Semak - has just left the theater. His agent said the actor was &quot;disappointed&quot; by the theater.
 Chekhov MKhAT is hoping to keep another St. Petersburger: former Lensoviet Theater actor Konstantin Khabensky, who stars in the &quot;Uboinaya Sila&quot; crime series on television - as well as playing the main character in Chekhov MKhAT's &quot;Duck Hunt&quot; - has been offered a permanent place. 
 
 <i>
Links: www.mxat.ru. For ticket information, call 380-8050. </i>

TITLE: transforming a soviet canteen
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The University Center - also known by the strange moniker of the Center of Nourishment, Culture and Business Cooperation - is familiar to State University students as a student dining hall, a <i>stolovaya </i>in the best Soviet tradition.
 
However, the center also hosts various public events that usually fall into one of two camps: fancy fashion shows and parties, like last year's Sushi-Disco; or staid conferences and presentations dealing with student life. The upcoming jazz evening &quot;Colors of Jazz,&quot; which takes place at the center on Wednesday, tries to combine the two, and its exotic cocktail of organizers makes it something of a curiosity.
 The impetus for the event comes from Sberbank, which has a reputation as a conservative savings bank with a rudimentary payments system and, presumably, a rather vague idea of youth culture and contemporary jazz music. However, the other two organizers - Felix Naroditsky, the head honcho at JFC Jazz Club, and Dmitry Milkov, an ex-director of the Nabokov Apartment Museum and former director of the Pro Arte Institute - should put some flesh on Sberbank's bare bones.
 The musical program features three young, yet locally established, bands. Sympho-Jazz, which combines a classical string quartet with jazz trumpet tunes, will be followed by Latin jazz from Tirami Su and vocalist Yana Rodion. Finally, Doo Bop Sound, which is also carving out a reputation in Europe, adds another flavor, with saxophone and acid-jazz rhythms. There will also be a performance by local jazz-modern dance school Cannon Dance. As Naroditsky puts it, &quot;the event will be a mixture of concert and club formats.&quot;
 The stolovaya is set to undergo a transformation for the event. &quot;I understand that it is no fun to come to a party at the same place you had soup earlier in the day,&quot; smiles Milkov. &quot;So we invited talented young designer Dima Davydov to redesign the interior.&quot; The stolovaya will be turned into a chill-out room, with drapes on the walls and theatrical lighting. Against this background, local DJs, including par.spb residents DJ Chak and DJ Raf, will play jazzy sets.
 The event's central tenet is that both the crowd and the performers are young. Sberbank sees it is a way to celebrate its 161st anniversary - its youngest clients are students who get their stipends on plastic cards. &quot;In February, we gave a free subscription to Kommersant newspaper to 400 of the best students at the city's universities,&quot; says Svetlana Sergeyeva of the bank's PR department. The bank's concerns are understandable, as it risks losing this section of its clientele once the students graduate, find a job and move to another commercial bank. The other reason for the bank's participation, says Sergeyeva, is that &quot;today, almost 20 percent of our top and middle managers in the Northwest Region are under 30.&quot;
 JFC Jazz Club, meanwhile, was involved in choosing the artists. &quot;It is a way to promote jazz culture and young jazz musicians,&quot; says Naroditsky. &quot;Most of the performers are around 25 or 26 years old.&quot; Sberbank has issued a CD of the featured bands that will be given out during the evening. Invitations for the event will be distributed at local jazz clubs. According to Naroditsky, &quot;the clubs' representatives will also be present, to tell students about their activities and upcoming concerts.&quot;
 &quot;The project is a natural continuation of my previous activities,&quot; says Milkov. &quot;It's like enlivening a historical space, such as the Nabokov Museum. It's also similar to bringing contemporary art to traditional museums, as Pro Arte does.&quot; His artistic mind should also add to the atmosphere.
 
 <i>&quot;Colors of Jazz,&quot; University Center, 6 Birzhevaya Liniya, Vasilievsky Island at 7 p.m. on Wednesday. Free admittance by invitation. Invitations can be picked up at local jazz venues. Links: www.nwsbrf.ru/jazz/index.html </i>

TITLE: country's top pop star hits town
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: She wanted to be a singer since she was five years old, and the childhood dream came true for Zemfira Ramazanova - better known simply as Zemfira - who plays the Ice Palace on Sunday.
 
Success was no surprise for Zemfira, who was always aware of her potential, although, when she left school, she had to force her autograph on her classmates. &quot;Take it now - or it will soon be too late,&quot; she warned. She wasn't joking.
 Since Zemfira made her debut, with her eponymous 1998 album, she has consistently been at the top of the Russian singles charts, and her three albums to date have become permanent best sellers in record shops - not to mention huge benefits for CD pirates.
 Zemfira is seen as the most sensational discovery in Russian rock in recent years. She headlines the country's biggest rock festivals, such as Nashestviye, and has a busy touring schedule. Her concert at the Ice Palace will showcase her most recent album, &quot;Fourteen Weeks of Silence,&quot; which was released in May this year, as well as older hits
 Zemfira is most frequently cited as Russia's most scandalous and wayward rock star. But what her critics brand being scandalous, the singer herself calls being straightforward and open. In her interviews, she often says that her art has met such a strong a response and so much love that her main purpose in life is to give love back to the audiences.
 Authorities in her hometown, the Ural Mountains town of Ufa, are proud of Zemfira, her reputation notwithstanding. On her 24th birthday (Aug 26, 2000), she received a State Youth Culture Prize from the government of Bashkortostan as a recognition of her work, and a snowmobile as a present.
 Zemfira's musical influences include Queen, Bjork, Joe Cocker, Depeche Mode and Peter Gabriel, but she denies accusations of plagiarism, such as using a Led Zeppelin tune in her song &quot;Traffic.&quot; &quot;It is so much nicer to listen to what you like than to copy it,&quot; she says.
 Her musical education is limited to a music school in Ufa, and Zemfira admits she is not interested in further musical studies. &quot;I would probably be accepted without exams now, which would be kind of embarrassing,&quot; she said in a recent interview. She describes her first tours as attempts &quot;just to play the right notes in the right place, get used to being on stage and accepting the fact that the stage is a natural place to work.&quot; Being on stage has become her second skin.
 
 <i>
Zemfira plays the Ice Palace on Sunday. </i>

TITLE: an inspector calls again
AUTHOR: by Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Since October, an announcement in neat red lettering has hung in the foyer of the Alexandriinsky Theater.
 
&quot;Dear spectators, we draw your attention to the fact that this production of 'Revizor' is based on the staging of V. Meyerhold and M. Korenev,&quot; it reads, referring to the theater's new production of Gogol's classic play, which translates as &quot;The Government Inspector.&quot; &quot;The performance is designed for adults.&quot;
 For the production, the Alexandriinsky has brought in contemporary cultural figures from Moscow - director Valery Fokin - and St. Petersburg - composer Leonid Desyatnikov and the a-cappella vocal ensemble Remake. For inspiration, it has turned to one of the 20th century's most authoritative directors - Vsevolod Meyerhold.
 Meyerhold staged the play in 1926 and, in his production, attempted to dispel the commonly held conception in Russian theaters of the play as a vaudeville. Instead, the director wanted &quot;to approach the play not as a comedy, but as a serious piece ... to make a Russian realistic comedy,&quot; as Gogol originally wanted. Meyerhold also asked Korenev to use the original, censored version of Gogol's play. In this respect, the set for the first scene - based on Gogol's own sketches - can be seen as a return to the author's &quot;original,&quot; as Meyerhold intended.
 In the first three acts, Fokin more or less adheres to Meyerhold: &quot;compactness&quot; on stage; the style of Khlestakov (Vitaly Kovalenko), who is small, bald, and wears a dress-coat and top hat; the Act II sets, which are identical to Meyerhold's; and the women in underwear, &quot;to excite some erotic feeling.&quot;
 At the same time, however, Fokin dilutes Meyerhold with various tricks of his own, such as the set for the first scene, the deacon-like pronunciation of the message by Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, the servant-and-governor scene, the neat joke by the governor (Sergei Parshin) about the fashion of the day that &quot;more waste is needed to see the governor's work.&quot; These tricks are the first signs of greater divergence from Meyerhold. 
 Fokin shows his hand from the moment the &quot;empty&quot; Khlestakov is &quot;filled,&quot; or &quot;inflated&quot; by the fears of the town's inhabitants. Khlestakov takes the role imposed on him, and really gets going when the director's tricks reach their apogee. The bribery scene is especially fascinatingly developed, &quot;curtailed&quot; by Fokin, as by Meyerhold.
 Khlestakov reaches an apotheosis of lying. The director puts us in a mental world of the main characters' illusions, with great marble columns, gilt frames, large mirrors. The matchmaking and the betrothal of the governor's daughter to Khlestakov occur against this background. The governor and his family imagine city life in high society, and contrast themselves to their former fellow citizens. This probably explains Fokin's strange direction here, and why he makes the characters bald - neutral, and dispossessed of any individuality. Additionally, the director wants to give the governor and his family some human features that the others - including Khlestakov - do not have: &quot;irrespective of what is ideal, the feeling of truth.&quot;
 When the fraud is exposed and the town's illusions shattered, the far-fetched &quot;palace&quot; disappears into the heavens, and the people drop their masks. Here, Fokin does not correspond to Meyerhold - who included Gogol's political ideology - nor to Gogol. Instead of Gogol's silent scene, Fokin uses the traditional first scene, as normally used in Russian theaters, although he does not allow it to develop. That is when the final curtain falls. 
 A soundtrack amplifies the attraction of the production. Remake performs songs, romances and various sounds live, enhancing the phantasmagoric feeling of the situation. There is probably a parallel here to Meyerhold's use of a Jewish-instruments orchestra in his production, if only in terms of the unusual qualities that can be perceived in the music.
 In yet another interesting trick, Fokin takes Khlestakov out of the main plot and puts him on the stage right in front of the audience, both before the beginning and after the end of the play, thereby promoting Gogol's idea that Khlestakov is a figure outside time.
 The production is engaging, but feels as though it will lose its appeal over time. The cast plays as significant a role as the director, so it is better to see it now.
 
 <i>
&quot;Revizor&quot; plays next on Nov. 29. </i>

TITLE: things are rarely what they seem
AUTHOR: by Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the novel &quot;The Garden of Forking Paths,&quot; by Argentinean author Jorges Luis Borges, a Chinese governor named Tsui Pen turns down the throne in order to write a book and create a labyrinth. After Tsui's death, his papers were indecipherable, due to their incoherent and self-contradictory nature, and the labyrinth remained undiscovered. One of the book's heroes, Englishman Dr. Stephen Albert, discovers that the book and the labyrinth were the same thing, and that the key to solving the riddle is time.
 
Tsui Pen did not believe in unified, absolute time but, rather, in an innumerable multitude of timelines - a growing network of divergent, convergent and parallel lines. The &quot;forking paths&quot; in the novel's title refer to bifurcations in time, not in space. The hero in Tsui Pen's text was given choices and had to pick one. Instead, however, he chose all of them, producing several different versions of the future - similar to the concept in astrophysics of &quot;sum-over histories&quot; - that, in turn, multiply and diverge. Thus, his book remained an incoherent, contradictory, unfinished mystery.
 The video installation &quot;Secret Garden&quot; that opened last week at the Russian Museum's Marble Palace is similarly unfinished, according to its creator, Paris-based Korean artist Aiyoung Yun, and is similarly open to different interpretations, understandings and choices. The work can be seen as an embodiment of Tsui Pen's &quot;garden of forking paths&quot; - a labyrinth of time offering multiple choices, and the simultaneous existence of parallel worlds.
 The &quot;Secret Garden&quot; takes up two halls, and is interesting, among other reasons, for its three-dimensional resolution of space. It comprises an artificial, neon-lit dark garden with white chamomile flowers and a set of forking paths. The first part of the garden contains a spring almond tree set against a river backdrop. The tree is covered, not with leaves, but with videos of a naked man - a symbol of basic personality, stripped of individuality and social identifiers - floating in space.
 According to Yun, &quot;the installation is a confrontation of the conscious space, symbolized by the tree, and of the unconscious space, symbolized by water.&quot; The garden is accompanied by a score of artificially produced sounds from nature. The forking paths lead visitors to various video objects, &quot;senses&quot; that depend on the visitor's choices.
 But beware, says Yun, for &quot;among these sprawling labyrinths, you will find illusions most seductive and truths most elusive.&quot;
 
 <i>
&quot;Secret Garden&quot; runs through Dec. 30 at the Marble Palace. </i>

TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: by Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Years ago, Fazil Iskander wrote a story called &quot;Dumayushchy o Rossii i Amerikanets&quot; (&quot;A Thinker About Russia and an American&quot;). Not just a brilliant treatise on Russia in the early years after the Soviet Union, it is also a classic example of the failure of intercultural communication. The American badgers the Russian about what Russians do other than think about Russia. The thinker tries to explain, &quot;Dumayut o Rossii. Eto glavnoe delo v Rossii&quot; (&quot;They think about Russia. That's the main occupation in Russia&quot;). Finally, the Russian admits not everyone thinks about Russia: &quot;Vse ostalnye voruyut&quot; (&quot;Everyone else steals&quot;).
 
The lexical variety and sophistication of Russian shows that <i>vorovstvo </i>(theft) is something of an art form. <i>Ukrast </i>is the most neutral word for &quot;to steal,&quot; and gives us the noun <i>krazha </i>(theft), as in: <i>u menya byla kvartirnaya krazha </i>(my apartment was robbed).
 In the Criminal Code, the lowest grade of larceny is <i>vorovstvo, </i>or theft without any force or weapon. The next step up the scale is <i>grabit, grabyozh, </i>or theft with the threat to use of some kind of weapon. Note that grabit is used to mean any kind of theft: <i>Finansovye usloviya kontrakta - prosto grabyozh </i>(the financial conditions of the contract are grand larceny). Top of the scale is <i>razboi </i>or <i>razboinoye napadeniye, </i>which translates as &quot;robbery with use of force,&quot; &quot;an attack,&quot; &quot;a mugging.&quot; <i>On stal zhertvoi razboinogo napadeniye - troye napali na nego, izbili, zabrali ego dengi i chasy. </i>(He was attacked on the street. Three guys jumped him, beat him up, and took his money and watch.) Russian slang has an elaborate lexicon for every kind of criminal and crime, but the chances are you'll never use them. It might be useful to know, however, that a pickpocket is <i>karmannik, </i>and an armed hold-up or mugging is the deceptively whimsical <i>gop-stop.</i>
 Russian conversational slang has lots of good words for &quot;pinching, swiping, ripping off.&quot; Of the ones that are fit to print, your starter vocabulary for the criminal life can include: <i>speret, styanut, stibrit, stashchit, uvesti. </i>I'm rather fond of the expression <i>pridelat nogi chemu-libo, </i>literally &quot;to give something legs&quot;: <i>Ona pridelala nogi moyei zazhigalke </i>(She made off with my lighter). From the old propensity of the Communist regime to expropriate private property, we have the jocular <i>skommunizdit.</i>
 Russian is a language of nuance. It gives us not only <i>vorovat, </i>but <i>podvorovyvat, </i>which means &quot;to steal a bit on the side,&quot; with the understanding that this isn't one's main profession, but a way of obtaining some money. In Iskander's story, the thinker about Russia is forced to admit that even those whose main occupation is thinking about Russia &quot;tozhe podvorovyvayut&quot; (&quot;also steal a bit on the side&quot;). The American tries to joke, suggesting that if &quot;those below&quot; <i>podvorovyvayut </i>(the prefix <i>pod- </i>can mean &quot;under&quot;), then certainly &quot;those on high&quot; <i>nadvorovyvayut </i>(the prefix <i>nad- </i>means &quot;above&quot;).
 The Russian is offended: <i>&quot;Srazu vidno, chto vy inostranets i ne chuvstvuyete samykh trepetnykh tonkostei nashego yazyka i nashei psikhologii. Podvorovyvat - eto chelovechno, skromno, dazhe uvazhitelno k tomu, u kogo podvorovyvayut. Podvorovyvat - eto znachit, voruyut s oglyadkoi na sovest. Voruyut i plachut, voruyut i plachut.&quot; </i>(&quot;It's obvious that you are a foreigner and don't feel the sweetest subtleties of our language and psychology. To steal a bit on the side is human, modest, even respectful of those you are stealing from. To steal a bit on the side is to steal with conscience. They steal and weep, steal and weep.&quot;)
 So, if you must steal - do it on the side, and with tears.
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based interpreter and translator. </i>

TITLE: 'Black Tide' Hits Coast in Northern Spain
AUTHOR: By Mar Roman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NOIA, Spain - With high winds and Atlantic Ocean currents carrying another &quot;black tide&quot; of sludge from a major fuel-oil spill toward shore, residents of northwest Spain worked feverishly Thursday to minimize the feared damage.
 
Fishermen harvested mussels, oysters and other commercially valuable shellfish ahead of schedule from beds in estuaries that risked contamination. Authorities deployed more oil-blocking barriers outside ports and rivers open to the ocean. Soldiers, environmentalists and volunteers cleaned beaches hit by last week's spill.
 &quot;We're afraid that the black tide will come here,&quot; said Maria Busto, 47, among more than 500 fishermen standing knee-deep in the rich Noia estuary, raking cockles and clams into pails.
 The normal daily quota is about 23 kilograms, worth about $12 each. That was set aside against the threat that the unharvested crop might be lost. By noon, after three hours' work in the rain and with the tide coming in, Busto had collected 29 kilograms.
 &quot;We're all worried,&quot; said Busto, a mother of two. Fishing provides about 1,500 jobs for this village of 15,000 and the government has ordered the market to close starting Friday. &quot;After tomorrow, we won't be able to sell anything.&quot;
 The fuel oil - about 2.7 million gallons or more - leaked from the Bahamas-flagged tanker Prestige in several spills starting Nov. 13 when its hull cracked in a storm.
 The ship finally broke in half and sank Tuesday about 240 kilometers off Cape Finisterre - which translates to Land's End Cape - carrying most of its 20-million-gallon cargo to the ocean floor.
 The mood of impending threat was heightened by newspaper photos and TV images of fishermen doggedly raking up mussels in the wind, rain and cold, and young soldiers, outfitted with gloves, face masks and yellow jumpsuits, shoveling toxic oil off beaches.
 While high winds and 8-meter waves dispersed some floating oil during the past two days, four slicks loomed at sea, and at least one licked the shore Thursday.
 A long beach at Mar de Fora that escaped last week's spill was coated Thursday with thick oil that rolled in with the surf amid high winds and a driving rain. A lone oil-soaked bird was seen floating in the rough waves.
 By noon Thursday, it was too early to gauge whether more oil would reach shore, and if so, where. Portugal to the south has been spared, but, nevertheless, was preparing for the worst. Several hundred volunteers were trained and soldiers were standing by for possible cleanups.
 Spain's environmental minister on Wednesday estimated economic damages so far at $42 million. Fishing in the area generates about $330 million annually, and has been banned since earlier this week.
 Oil has damaged about 90 beaches along more than 280 kilometers of coastline, minister Jaume Matas added.
 Defense Minister Federico Trillo disclosed Wednesday that Spain had considered bombing the ship with military jets, the aim being to sink it or burn the fuel. Now officials say that they're hopeful the oil sank intact with the Prestige and would solidify in the frigid cold and high pressure 3.5 kilometers below.
 Seeking to ease fears of an ecological catastrophe, the Interior Ministry said that no more oil had spilled since the single-hulled vessel sank.
 Prestige's cargo was more than twice the amount of crude oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989, one of the world's worst environmental disasters. Tens of thousands of sea birds and other wildlife perished in that incident.
 The wildlife toll from the Prestige spill, as reported by government officials and environmental groups, has reached into the hundreds, perhaps thousands.
 Nearby countries were sending environmental cleanup vessels, while fellow European Union governments discussed legislation aimed at phasing out single-hulled oil carriers.

TITLE: Police Arrest Suspected Bomber in Indonesia
AUTHOR: By Michael Casey
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JAKARTA, Indonesia - Police arrested an alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings that killed nearly 200 people last month, Indonesia's chief of intelligence said Thursday.
 
Imam Samudra, an Afghan-trained militant with alleged links to the al-Qaida-affiliated Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, is said to have planned the Oct. 12 attack and helped build the bombs that exploded outside the Sari Club nightclub and in Paddy's bar.
 Samudra was arrested in the western port town of Merak on Indonesia's main island of Java, A.M. Hendropriyono, chief of the national intelligence agency, said. Using information from Samudra's arrested guards, police captured him on a bus pulling up to a ferry bound for the western Indonesian island of Sumatra.
 Police were searching for eight other suspects, spokesperson Brigadier General Edward Aritonang said.
 Samudra's arrest could give authorities information into the workings of Jemaah Islamiyah, which has planned a series of attacks against Western interests in Southeast Asia.
 Samudra, a leading member of the group, was responsible for carrying out the Bali blasts on the orders of Jemaah Islamiyah's alleged operations chief Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, an intelligence official said, on condition of anonymity.
 Hambali has been implicated in operations ranging from logistical support for the Sept. 11 hijackers to bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines.
 &quot;We hope that, through him, we can get Hambali,&quot; Hendropriyono said. &quot;I also am confident that the rest [of the suspects] will be caught soon.&quot;
 National Police Chief General Da'i Bachtiar said that authorities' first break in the case came Tuesday, when they arrested two of Samudra's guards near his hometown, Serang. The men led them to Samudra, who was arrested Thursday afternoon.
 Police say that Samudra learned bomb-making techniques in Afghanistan, and is believed to be responsible for a series of Indonesian church bombings in 2000. Samudra, who has at least five aliases, is described by police as a mobile field commander with a university education and a passion for computers.
 In the early 1990s, Samudra taught at a religious school in southern Malaysia run by the suspected leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah.
 Aritonang said that Samudra &quot;now wants to speak&quot; and authorities were searching for his accomplices in the same province where Samudra was arrested.
 &quot;There are raids going on now,&quot; Aritonang said.
 Police this week released sketches of six of the suspects, raided Islamic boarding schools and swept through rural villages where they were believed to be hiding.
 Samudra was arrested more than two weeks after police captured Amrozi, one of the bombers, who has provided the names of other suspects and detailed the bombing plot. Amrozi confessed to owning a minivan used in the attack outside the Sari Club and to having obtained bomb-making materials, police say.
 &quot;Samudra is a much bigger fish than Amrozi,&quot; Hendropriyono said.

TITLE: Suicide Bombing on Israeli Bus Kills 11 Students, Soldiers
AUTHOR: By Jason Keyser
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - A Palestinian wearing a bomb belt blew himself up Thursday on a Jerusalem city bus packed with high school students and soldiers, killing 11 passengers and wounding dozens in a morning rush hour suicide attack.
 
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Israeli officials said that the assailant came from Bethlehem, which raised the possibility that Israel might retake the West Bank town from which it withdrew in August.
 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon convened his security cabinet for an emergency meeting later Thursday.
 Islamic militants said that attacks would continue, despite efforts by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to negotiate a freeze in attacks at least until Israel's Jan. 28 election. A continuation of bombings and shootings - there have been scores in the past 26 months of fighting - would strengthen Israel's right-wing parties.
 The assailant, wearing a bomb belt around his waist, set off the explosives in the middle of the bus at about 7:10 a.m. local time, as it was stopped in Jerusalem's residential Kiryat Menachem neighborhood, police said.
 Maor Kimche, 15, said that he had just boarded the bus when the blast went off. &quot;Suddenly, it was black and smoky. There were people on the floor. Everything was bloody. There was glass everywhere and body parts,&quot; Kimche said.
 The 10th grader, who had been en route to school in downtown Jerusalem, jumped out of a bus window and was scooped up by a taxi driver who took him to nearby Hadassah Hospital. Kimche was lightly injured in the left leg.
 The youngster said that the bus was crowded with high school students, soldiers and elderly passengers. He said he'd ride the bus again once he was well.
 &quot;How else will I get to school?&quot; he asked.
 The blast blew out the bus windows. A torso that had fallen over the side of the bus was covered with a white-and-blue checkered blanket. 
 As rescue workers removed the dead from the bus, the bodies were placed in black plastic bags that were numbered and laid out in a row along a sidewalk.
 Eleven people were killed and at least 48 wounded, eight of them very seriously, authorities said. Israel Radio said many of the casualties were school students, though hospital officials declined to give a breakdown.
 Israeli police identified the bomber as Nael Abu Hilail, 22. Abu Hilail's family said that he left home Wednesday. His friends said that he was a supporter of Islamic Jihad, though there was no claim of responsibility by the group.
 Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Sharon, said that the attack was proof that even efforts to bring about a limited truce and withdraw from some Palestinian areas appeared futile.
 &quot;All our efforts to hand over areas ... and all the talk about a possible cease-fire, that was all window dressing, because, on the ground there, was a continuous effort to carry out as many terrorist activities as possible,&quot; Gissin said.
 Gissin accused the Palestinian Authority of assisting the attackers.
 Ghassan Khatib, the Palestinian labor minister, held Israel responsible, saying that Sharon's strikes against militants provoked more Palestinian attacks. &quot;Sharon and his policies are responsible for the continuation of violence,&quot; he said.
 Ismail Abu Shanab, a leader of the Islamic militant Hamas group, said that &quot;the Palestinian people are determined to continue the resistance until we liberate our land.&quot; However, he stopped short of claiming responsibility on behalf of Hamas.
 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, with the help of Egypt, has been trying to persuade Hamas to stop attacks, at least during Israel's election campaign. A first round of talks in Cairo ended inconclusively, but both sides had said that negotiations would continue. Islamic Jihad has not participated in the talks.
 The Israeli army has enforced stringent travel restrictions on Palestinians in the past 26 months of fighting, and has reoccupied most West Bank towns in an attempt to stop the attacks.
 Israel's range of responses is restricted by the possibility of a U.S. strike against Iraq. Several Israeli hardline leaders have called for Arafat's expulsion in retaliation for bombings, but such a step is sharply opposed by Washington, which is eager to maintain the support of moderate Arab governments.
 In other developments, senior Palestinian officials welcomed a call by Israel's new opposition leader Amram Mitzna to restart peace talks, saying that they believed that they could reach a peace settlement with Israel if the dovish ex-general is elected prime minister. But Arafat and some aides stopped short of a clear endorsement, apparently for fear of hurting Mitzna's chances in the upcoming elections.
 Mitzna said that he was encouraged by the response. &quot;If the biggest of our enemies is congratulating me on my election, perhaps that is a sign that in the future there will be someone with whom to talk and something to talk about,&quot; he told Israel Radio.
 Sharon's Likud Party is easily the favorite in the Jan. 28 general election.

TITLE: North Korea Keen To Save U.S. Deal
AUTHOR: Jae-Suk Yoo
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Thursday that a 1994 nuclear agreement with the United States collapsed because of the U.S.-led decision to suspend fuel-oil deliveries to the communist country. 
 
But, in a vaguely worded statement, North Korea's Foreign Ministry appeared to leave open the possibility that the deal might be salvaged. It said that an earlier appeal for a nonaggression pact with the United States was aimed at preventing the nuclear agreement from being &quot;derailed at any cost.&quot; 
 It said that such a pact was the only &quot;realistic solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula&quot; and did not say that it had any plans to restart a suspected nuclear-weapons program that was frozen under the 1994 deal. 
 Last week, the United States and its allies, South Korea, Japan and the European Union, suspended deliveries of fuel oil to energy-starved North Korea to punish it for violating the 1994 pact by embarking on a second nuclear-weapons program. 
 The oil deliveries are part of the pact known as the Agreed Framework that required a U.S.-led consortium to build two modern nuclear reactors in North Korea. In exchange, the North agreed to dismantle a suspected nuclear-weapons program using plutonium. 
 Despite recent revelations that the North has a second nuclear program, an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that the blame for the erosion of the Agreed Framework lay with the United States. 
 &quot;Now that the U.S. unilaterally gave up its last commitment under the framework, [North Korea] acknowledges that it is high time to decide upon who is to blame for the collapse of the framework,&quot; the spokesperson said in a statement carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA. 
 It was the first time that North Korea had publicly said that it considered the agreement to have collapsed. 
 After visiting Pyongyang in October, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said that officials had told him that they considered the 1994 agreement dead. At that time, he said, they admitted to a second nuclear program. 
 In recent months, North Korea had repeatedly threatened to abandon the accord, complaining about delays in the construction of the reactors. It also accused Washington of trying to undermine its political system and even invade, citing U.S. President George W. Bush's labeling of the North as part of an &quot;axis of evil,&quot; along with Iran and Iraq. 
 The North Korean spokesperson said that the U.S. assertion that the North violated the Agreed Framework &quot;is a burglary logic of America-style superpower chauvinism that a big country may threaten a small country as it wishes, but a small country should not try to cope with such threat.&quot;

TITLE: Loko Drops CSKA for First League Crown
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Lokomotiv Moscow edged city rival CSKA 1-0 in a one-time &quot;golden game&quot; on Thursday to clinch the first Russian league title in the club's 67-year history.
 
Lokomotiv captain Dmitry Loskov beat Russian international goalkeeper Ruslan Nigmatullin with a low shot from the edge of the box after five minutes to settle an ill-tempered Moscow derby. 
 The playoff was necessary to decide the championship, after both clubs finished the season with 66 points.
 The match was played amid heavy security at a neutral venue - Moscow's Dinamo Stadium - after hundreds of CSKA supporters clashed with riot police following last Sunday's game in Ramenskoye, a small town some 30 kilometers southeast of the capital.
 The result also snapped the six-year title-winning streak put together by both teams' city rival Spartak, which this year finished third. Spartak also endured a miserable European campaign, finishing in last place in its Champions League group, losing all six of its games, and scoring only 1 goal.
 Lokomotiv's previous best finish in the Premier Division was second place, a result it achieved in 1995 - behind Alaniya Vladikavkaz, the only non-Moscow team to win the championship in its 11-year history - and three years in a row from 1999 through last year, when it finished runner-up to Spartak on each occasion.
 This time, though, the glory belonged to the railway club, which illuminated the Russian Premier Division with some much-needed attractive play, and also provided a boost to Russian soccer's woeful image with its successful European campaign. In contrast to Spartak, Lokomotiv successfully navigated a passage into the second group phase of the Champions League, although it finished a distant second behind Barcelona of Spain, which was unbeaten.
 The league season once again emphasised the traditional dominance of teams from the capital, which finished in the first four places in the standings, Torpedo rounding out the quartet. Apart from Alaniya - which additionally had two second-place finishes, in 1992 and 1996 - only Rotor Volgograd has finished in the top two, finishing second in 1993 and 1997.
 Meanwhile, Zenit, which had a disappointing run to finish 10th, has appointed a new coach - the first foreigner to hold the position in the club's history. Forty-nine-year-old former Czechoslovakia striker Vlastimir Petrela takes over from caretaker coach Boris Rapoport.
 Petrela, who represented his country at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, started at Slavia Prague, which he managed for five years until 1992. He then took over at Slovan Liberec, which he guided back into the top division in the Czech Republic. A move to Sparta Prague brought Petrela his first trophy as a coach - the Czech cup in 1996 - before he moved to Mlada Boleslav, which he also guided back into the top division.
 Petrela is scheduled to take up the position on Dec. 1.
 
 <i>(Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Dutch Down Germany, Wales Wins Again
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON - The Netherlands handed Germany a rare home defeat when a performance full of counter-attacking flair earned them a 3-1 victory in Gelsenkirchen. The game was the pick of 18 friendlies on the continent, though the six teams involved in Euro 2004 qualifiers will feel their matches were the day's more important business.
 
In those three qualifiers, Wales has now won three out of three in Group Nine with a 2-0 victory in Azerbaijan, San Marino was denied a first-ever European qualifying point as a last-minute own goal gave Latvia a 1-0 away win in Group Four, and Cyprus beat Malta 2-1 in the battle between Group One's two winless teams.
 In other friendlies, reigning European champion France easily beat Yugoslavia 3-0, Italy was held to a 1-1 home draw by World Cup semi-finalist Turkey and, at the other end of the soccer spectrum, Luxembourg drew 0-0 at home with the Cape Verde Islands.
 Elsewhere, Denmark beat Poland 2-0, Croatia won 1-0 in Romania, Norway beat Austria by the same score in Vienna, and the Czech Republic played out a 3-3 draw with Sweden in Prague.
 The match of the night came at the home of Schalke 04, where World Cup finalist Germany controlled possession for long periods but was overcome by the speed and finishing of the Dutch.
 Striker Patrick Kluivert put the visitor ahead after 22 minutes, but Fredi Bobic celebrated his international return after an absence of nearly five years with a diving header to tie the score.
 Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink restored the Dutch lead in the 69th minute, and Ruud van Nistelrooy got the third goal 10 minutes later after another quick break.
 &quot;It was a world-class game,&quot; said Van Nistelrooy.
 The match was useful for both teams, who lead their respective Euro 2004 qualifying groups with two wins each.
 Doing even better is Wales, which sits proudly at the top of Group Nine with a maximum nine points after a convincing 2-0 win in Azerbaijan.
 Wales, missing several first-choice players through injury, won its game with headers from Gary Speed and John Hartson.
 It tops the group after earlier beating Finland and Italy. Wednesday's win stretched its unbeaten run to eight games - matching its previous record - and boosted its chances of qualifying for its first major tournament since the 1958 World Cup.
 San Marino looked set to earn its first-ever European qualifying point after losing all 28 of its previous games, until Carlo Valentini scored a heartbreaking own goal in the last minute to hand Latvia a 1-0 win.
 Latvia leads Group Four with seven points, three ahead of Hungary, which drew 1-1 with Moldova in a friendly.
 Two goals from Eric Carriere and one from Olivier Kapo rewarded France for its dominance over Yugoslavia.
 Olympique Lyon striker Carriere scored after 11 and 50 minutes, and Kapo rounded off a good night for the hosts 20 minutes from the end.
 Yugoslavia showed some bright touches early on, and only good goalkeeping by Fabien Barthez prevented Mateja Kezman from putting them on the scoresheet.
 The latest victory means that France is unbeaten in five games under Jacques Santini, who replaced Roger Lemerre after the team's first round exit at the World Cup.
 Turkey dominated the early stages against Italy in Pescara and deservedly took the lead on Belozoglu Emre's long-range shot after 28 minutes.
 Emre's Inter Milan teammate Christian Vieri slid in an equalizer 10 minutes later and, although Filippo Inzaghi missed a great chance to win it late in the game, it was another uninspiring night for the Italians and their embattled coach, Giovanni Trapattoni.
 Poland found itself outclassed by a resurgent Denmark in Copenhagen.
 AC Milan striker Jon Dahl Tomasson scored the first goal after jigging through the cumbersome Polish defence in the 22nd minute, and also had a hand in the second goal, scored by Thomas Roell Larsen in the 72nd.
 In late matches, Spain beat Bulgaria 1-0 in Granada, where Jose Mari scored the only goal of the game after 10 minutes.
 Portugal, the host in 2004, beat Scotland 2-0 on a waterlogged field that made a mockery of the occasion.
 Pauleta scored twice in the first half, during which Portugal contrived to miss a penalty on a bog of a field in Braga.
 Further afield, Tunisia and Egypt drew 0-0 in Tunis where former France boss Roger Lemerre took control of Tunisia for the first time. The match was held up for 30 minutes when a floodlight pylon caught fire resulting in a power outage at the grounds.
 Also Wednesday, World Cup champion Brazil edged South Korea, 3-2, and Argentina downed Japan 2-0 in exhibition games in Asia.
 Ronaldo, wearing gloves in the cold drizzle in Seoul, scored twice and Ronaldinho made a penalty kick during injury time to lead the Brazilians. South Korea, the fourth-place finisher in the World Cup in June, had goals from Seol Ki-hyeon and Ahn Jung-hwan.
 Mario Zagallo, Brazil's 71-year-old coach, came out of retirement to coach the team one last time.
 In Saitama, Japan, Argentina defender Juan Pablo Sorin had a goal in the 46th minute and Hernan Crespo scored on a header two minutes later.
 Japan was without its talented trio of Hidetoshi Nakata, Junichi Inamoto and Shinji Ono. All play for European clubs.
 Japan has lost its last four games against Argentina, including a 1-0 defeat in its World Cup debut in France in 1998.
 
 <i>(Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: Penguins Continue To Slide After Markov Strikes in OT
AUTHOR: By Ira Podell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania - The Montreal Canadiens had all the time they needed to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins - again.
 
Andrei Markov finished off the Penguins on Wednesday night, scoring at 2:25 in overtime for a 3-2 victory.
 Montreal beat Pittsburgh twice in three nights in overtime, winning 5-4 at home Monday. The Penguins are having trouble at all times, and their winless streak reached seven games (0-3-2-2).
 &quot;It's getting a little frustrating,&quot; said Pittsburgh's Jan Hrdina, who scored both goals for the home team. &quot;But we know it's going to turn for us.&quot;
 What was most frustrating until the winning goal, was what Penguins goalie Jean-Sebastien Aubin was doing to the Canadiens.
 &quot;We really concentrated on playing well in our zone and it started from there,&quot; Canadiens forward Joe Juneau said. &quot;Their goalie made some great saves - I can think of six or seven great saves he made. If it wasn't for him, the score would have been much different.&quot;
 Aubin stopped 32 shots and his play only dropped off briefly in the second period, when Yanic Perreault and Richard Zednik scored 28 seconds apart to give Montreal a 2-1 lead. That advantage lasted just 2 1/2 minutes until Hrdina tied it.
 &quot;He is playing with a lot of confidence right now,&quot; Montreal coach Michel Therrien said of Aubin. &quot;He is a real bull on the ice right now, he is controlling the puck and he has a great future ahead of him.&quot;
 Montreal is 7-0-1 in its last eight games in Pittsburgh and 2-0-1 against the Penguins this season. Montreal is unbeaten in six overtime games, tying four times.
 The Penguins have lost three and tied three others without winning in the extra session.
 &quot;We are getting to overtime and whatever the problem is, we are going to have to correct it,&quot; Penguins coach Rick Kehoe said. &quot;We played hard and we got a point. It's just that they are in our conference and picked up two. Wehave to find a way to get over that hump in overtime.&quot;
 
 <strong>
Columbus 3, St. Louis 2. </strong>In Columbus, Ohio, David Vyborny scored while falling to the ice with 0:47.7 left as Columbus beat St. Louis.
 
The late victory was a turnaround for the Blue Jackets, who have lost three games in the final 0:35 and another when they had a lead with just over a minute left.
 Marc Denis stopped 27 shots after Pavol Demitra scored on the Blues' first shot just 0:16 into the game - the fastest goal ever scored against Columbus.
 Whitney had two assists for Columbus, which snapped a four-game winless streak (0-2-1-1).
 The Blues have lost three of four and four of six.
 
 <strong>
N.Y. Islanders 3, Florida 3. </strong>In Sunrise, Florida, Kenny Jonsson scored midway through the third period as New York tied the Panthers.
 
Claude Lapointe and Alexei Yashin also scored for the Islanders, unbeaten in their last five trips to Florida (3-0-2).
 The Panthers have played overtime in 11 of their 21 games this season, and for the second time in as many nights. Florida, 3-4-3 in the extra session, lost at Atlanta on Tuesday.
 Viktor Kozlov scored his 100th career goal for the Panthers, who are winless in six games, but have five points in that stretch. Peter Worrell and Niklas Hagman also scored for Florida, and Jani Hurme stopped 42 shots - seven in overtime.
 
 <strong>
Dallas 2, Phoenix 2. </strong>In Phoenix, Deron Quint and Danny Markov scored late in the second period, and Brian Boucher had 36 saves as the Coyotes rallied from a two-goal deficit to tie Dallas.
 
Boucher gave up goals to Brenden Morrow and Sergei Zubov on Dallas' first 11 shots, but made 27 saves the rest of the way.
 He had seven saves in overtime, four during Dallas' power play that began with 2:43 left.
 
 <strong>
Vancouver 5, Chicago 3. </strong>In Vancouver, British Columbia, Markus Naslund scored two power-play goals and added an assist as the Canucks beat Chicago for their fifth straight victory.
 
Brendan Morrison had a goal and an assist, and Trevor Linden and Matt Cooke also scored for Vancouver. Defensemen Mattias Ohlund and Ed Jovanovski each added two assists, and Dan Cloutier made 22 saves for the Canucks, who have won seven of eight.
 Eric Daze scored his first goal and added an assist for Chicago. Rookie Tyler Arnason and Steve Sullivan also scored for the Blackhawks, who lost for the second time in as many nights after a six-game unbeaten streak.

TITLE: Boston Takes Revenge on Nets
AUTHOR: By Dennis Waszak Jr.
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOSTON - The Boston Celtics and New Jersey Nets are waiting until the playoffs to officially renew one of the NBA's budding rivalries.
 
&quot;It doesn't mean nothing,&quot; Celtics guard Paul Pierce said Wednesday night after Boston's 96-79 home victory. &quot;This game doesn't put us into the NBA Finals. It's a regular-season game.&quot; 
 The teams met in the Eastern Conference finals last season and became bitter opponents when New Jersey objected to how Boston celebrated after the Nets blew a 26-point lead in Game 3. Celtics fans also taunted Jason Kidd's wife and son during the series, which the Nets won in six games.
 &quot;The rivalry started in the playoffs, and it will have to continue in the playoffs, not the regular season,&quot; Kidd said.
 Tony Delk and Shammond Williams each scored 21 points - the first time this season that neither Pierce nor Antoine Walker led the Celtics in scoring. Pierce had 18 points and 13 rebounds, and Walker added 16 points as the Celtics snapped a two-game losing streak.
 &quot;The big two didn't have their 'A' game tonight,&quot; said Kidd, who scored 19 points. &quot;So it shows they're different from last year.&quot;
 The Celtics took control with a pair of 11-0 runs in the third quarter, with the Nets scoring just 14 points on 4-for-22 shooting in the period.
 &quot;We were terrible tonight,&quot; Nets coach Byron Scott said. &quot;I don't understand how you can come in here, especially against a team that you know is going to play you extremely hard, that wants to beat you badly ... and we comeout with a lackadaisical effort.&quot;
 
 <strong>
Indiana 97, Toronto 95. </strong>In Toronto, Al Harrington scored 16 of his 22 points in the second half as Indiana improved to 9-1 to match its best start.
 
Jermaine O'Neal added 20 points for the Pacers, who tied the team record set in the 1969-70 ABA season.
 Voshon Lenard had 22 points, and Alvin Williams 21 for the shorthanded Raptors, who have lost three straight.
 
 <strong>
San Antonio 95, L.A. Lakers 88. </strong>In San Antonio, Stephen Jackson scored a career-high 28 points, including eight 3-pointers, as the Spurs overcame an early shooting slump.
 
The Spurs made only one of their first 19 shots from the field and fell behind by 12 in the opening period. But Jackson came off the bench and made three 3-pointers late in the quarter to start San Antonio's comeback.
 Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 24 points, but scored only nine in the second half. Injured center Shaquille O'Neal plans to make his season debut Friday night at home against Chicago.
 
 <strong>
Detroit 79, Miami 68. </strong>In Auburn Hills, Michigan, Ben Wallace had 19 rebounds, a season-best 12 points and tied a franchise high with 10 blocks to lead Detroit over Miami.
 
Chucky Atkins scored a season-best 21 points in place of the injured Chauncey Billups.
 Eddie Jones scored 15 points for Miami, which failed to reach 70 points for the second time in three games.
 
 <strong>
Minnesota 103, Atlanta 93. </strong>In Atlanta, Troy Hudson scored 20 points and Marc Jackson added 18 for Minnesota.
 
Kevin Garnett was held to 15 points on 5-for-19 shooting from the floor, but had a game-high 12 rebounds for the Timberwolves, who beat the Hawks for the sixth straight time.
 Glenn Robinson scored 33 points and Shareef Abdur-Rahim had 23 points and 11 rebounds for Atlanta, which had won three straight and was 4-0 at home.
 
 <strong>
Utah 96, Denver 79. </strong>In Denver, Karl Malone scored 21 points, including 16 in the second half, and Utah handed the Nuggets their fifth straight loss on Wednesday.
 
Juwan Howard led the Nuggets with 17 points and 13 rebounds.
 In other NBA games, it was: Philadelphia 95, Memphis 88; Portland 98, Orlando 84; Golden State 100, Chicago 94; and Sacramento 93, L.A. Clippers 89.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Vaughan Offers Hope
 </b>

ADELAIDE (Reuters) - Michael Vaughan scored his first test hundred against Australia as England's cricketers finally enjoyed some luck on their troubled Ashes tour on Thursday.
 Vaughan survived a series of let-offs to make 177 on Thursday as England piled on 295 for four on the opening day of the second test at the Adelaide Oval.
 England captain Nasser Hussain also rode his luck to score 47 after the Australians dropped five catches and missed a run out in an uncharacteristically sloppy fielding performance.
 After choosing to bat first on a flat pitch, England dominated the entire day, losing just one wicket in each of the first two session and two in the last to breathe new life into the series after Australia won the opening test by 384 runs.
 Vaughan was caught at slip in the final over of the day after making his sixth career test hundred and his fifth this year.
 
 
<b>Woods Flares Up
 </b>

MIYAZAKI, Japan (AP) - Tiger Woods is becoming annoyed by the calls for him to skip next year's Masters because of the all-male membership at Augusta National Golf Club.
 "It's frustrating because I'm the only player they are asking," Woods said Wednesday, two days after an editorial in The New York Times urged him to skip the Masters as a gesture against sexism.
 "They're asking me to give up an opportunity no one has ever had - winning the Masters three years in a row," said Woods, who was in Japan for this week's Dunlop Phoenix. No one has boycotted the Masters before, he added with a smile.
 Woods has repeatedly said he thinks women should be allowed to join the club, but that he is an honorary member and doesn't have voting rights on membership.
 The Augusta National declined to comment.
 
 
<b>Thrashers Lash Out
 </b>

ATLANTA (AP) - The Atlanta Thrashers found a new goaltender, then rallied for an exciting win. Not a bad day for one of the worst teams in the NHL.
 Shawn McEachern scored a power-play goal at 3:23 in overtime Tuesday night to give Atlanta a 4-3 victory over the Florida Panthers, just hours after the Thrashers reached a tentative agreement on a contract with free-agent goalie Byron Dafoe. 
 "It's a great day in Thrasherville," coach Curt Fraser said, beaming. "We get a great win and add a player of that caliber. I don't know what [General Manager Don Waddell] did up there tonight, but the boss really did a great thing for our hockey club."
 Dafoe's deal is for one year with a player option in 2003-2004. The 31-year-old goalie had a career-high 35 wins last season in leading Boston to the best record in the Eastern Conference.
 
 
<b>MLB Goes South
 </b>

IRVING, Texas (AP) - The Montreal Expos will play 22 of their 81 home games in Puerto Rico under a plan announced Wednesday, and the 2003 season will open in Japan with a two-game series between Seattle and Oakland.
 Seeking to increase revenue from the Expos, who are among the worst draws in the major leagues, baseball announced plans to play three homestands covering seven series at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan.
 Commissioner Bud Selig also appointed a committee, filled with many of his closest advisers, to find a permanent solution for the Expos, who were bought by the other 29 teams before last season and are run by the commissioner's office.